Ian Douglas Robertson lives in Athens, Greece. He has had a number of poems and stories published in online and print magazines as well as three books of non-fiction. He has also published several novels, including Fo’s baby, Turtle Hawks, Break, Break, Break, Under the Olive Tree, The Frankenstein Legacy, On the Side of the Angels, The Reluctant Messiah and The Adventures of Jackie and Jovie. His latest novel The Return of the Dissolute Son was published in 1st August 2024.
Please visit: https://www.iandouglasrobertson.com
Drizzle took me to a dark museum.
No one there.
Perhaps the first visitor in months, if not years.
Dreary, dank and archaic,
Lacking nothing but cobwebs.
The house of a monumental couple
Who dedicated their lives to the dream
Of bringing back an ancient ideal
Long marred by the stains of time.
A walk through the ancient ruins,
Where history and nature vie in perpetual contest.
Nature, it seems, has the upper hand,
Wearing down stone
Fragmenting the fabrications of man.
Coffee on a balcony overlooking a river of olive trees
Flowing unperturbed along the valley bed,
Backing up slightly, where the funnel narrows.
Wispy clouds hang at eye level,
Like smoke rising from an invisible fire.
Below, crowds spill in from around the world
To behold the crumbling columns
And catch a glimpse of a distant, fading civilization,
Unaware of the olive groves hurtling to the sea
Or the misty clouds drifting aimlessly, this way and that.
The sun will soon be out.
Eva and Angelos embraced
An ancient civilization.
To bring it back
To life.
But what is past is past.
Time, like the river of olive trees, flows on,
Carrying with it
Change
That in time will erode antiquity,
Leaving the sediment of a new civilization in its wake
For a future Eva and another poet
To try and resurrect.
Poetry in this post: © Ian Douglas Robertson
Published with the permission of Ian Douglas Robertson