Author: Anders Dahlgren

Watching the light change the sea in Sardegna
          on sea where we swam together, the vanishing sun makes eternal
the cries of wild parrots, sharp impossible birds
who look like limes rolled in dust.
                    The wind blows gigantic over the savage hillside,
a clamor of cactus and pine, olive and fuchsia. There is nothing
in Sardegna except a white bed
and curtains embroidered with cormorants
(but maybe they are roosters), and
          the suggestion of hearts to be woven together
          (but this is very delicate).
There is nothing else here except the heavy salt of the water,
which sticks to my skin, an insistent ocean armor,
          here to protect me from cruel things
          like the city of Florence, which gave us a fever,
                                                  and which I detest.
The green parrots sleep when the sun melts on the hill.
Till then, you will not hear the sea.
                    But as the light bends soft over the water at dusk,
          you will know the essence of something:
Blue,
          gold,
                    nacre,
                              white,
the gentle closed eye of a parrot at night,
behind which lies the mad imagination of a parrot,
          which in turn dreams into being the island.
Here, I love you, walk with me—for the sake of the sky.

 
Birds of Mount Ida

Zeus was raised on a diet of honey and goat’s milk.
When he came of age, he decreed that all honeybees
were sacred. He placed their combs in a deep green cave.
He provided for each god a private honeycomb:
          one for Athena
          one for Hephaestus
          one for Apollo
                    and so on.
In time, a group of mortal men climbed
          the mountain where honeybees filed in and out.
They followed their translucent wings, keeping their eyes
on the bees’s sharp yellow coats. As they approached the combs,
they caught Zeus’s eye. He thought to strike them down
with a thunderbolt, but
          rather than contaminate his sacred cave
          with the stench of carrion,
          he turned them into a flock of birds.
     They rose on confused wings out into the red light of the sun.