Anniversary

"The moon rises above the rocky spine of the island chalking the brittle harbour dusty white,
like an impatient customs officer telling us to go.

There’s no colour under this Aegean moon, only a pallid sky.
It reaches unsympathetically through the window

and marks Passed across your shoulders.
No stars in the sky now, but the floor is still white with moonbeams. They flow over your toes like spilt milk.

No use crying over that."

She was sitting just off to my right at the side of the stage.
It was an important night. It was the night I first knew what it meant to perform.
She smiled. I smiled back. She had full lips and a lot of mascara around her eyes.

That night I sang a song and noticed for the first time the attention of the audience. I had never felt this intensity before. I had sung the words, got through the chords; that was it. This time I felt a tension, an expectation in the darkness after the first few lines. How am I to explain it? I paused, scarcely a pause, but I could feel the hidden crowd lean towards me, waiting for the word. I felt I could delay it for ever. When finally I spoke it it dropped into the blackness like a pebble dropped carefully into an invisible pond. I felt the ripples spread out. I felt them come back to me. I was in control. I knew then what I would do for the rest of my life. This was the triumph of temptation. Did I get lost at that moment, or did I need all this first, before I arrived here?

Afterwards we drank together and walked back to my pension through the cold streets. Her name was Jacqueline. She was half French, half Greek. Mostly French.
She wore a black coat with a big feathery fur collar that evening. And high heeled impractical patent leather shoes that clicked and clacked on the flagstones as we made our way through the shuttered streets. And I was victorious. I had discovered applause. I was Alexander the Great. The moon shone down clapping her chalky hands from high above the Acropolis. White flowers fell into the alleys around us as we walked together.

In my cupboard sized room Jacqueline took off her coat and I hung it in the wardrobe with my guitar. That, apart from the bed, was the only furniture. The door was a mirror. It beamed us back on ourselves and showed us how we thought we were. She was wearing a tight red dress. I lay on her, wrinkling it, and fell asleep immediately, triumphant after my first victory.

"The fist night I made love to an audience
I walked back to my lodgings through the sleeping Athenian streets
and cold stiletto footsteps clapped me
all the way home.

Above the Acropolis
the moon applauded icily,
dropping chill white flowers
where my feet would fall.

Since my victory
I have bought your red silk concupiscence
as easily as a late night souvlaki.

Walk the streets by my side, if you want.
Applause is a whore’s embrace,
It grips me tighter than anything your thin arms could offer.

In the streets of the Plaka
crushed magnolia petals lie like dead snakes on the morning flagstones.
I am envenomed now.
These blossoms have bruised my heel."