You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed...
Psalm 128:2
Time has scalloped and tightly crimped
the hill’s stone — all the troughs
and rifts of its flanks studded
with cypress, laurels. The Acrocorinth
juts into wind above the yellowed vineyards and timber pig-sheds, the fish
like wands of garnet or black-spotted quartz carving the shallows at Vrahati beach.
My grandfather’s people
coaxed
clusters of bitter-and-sweet jade fruit
from the vines, while time — like a god’s
hand on the hill — tapped off seams of limestone with the rain’s pick, or pounded out
trenches with fist-fulls of hail, lightning. In the village, pines drip
resin in the brush. I walk
dirt tracks where hens pace for seed. In dusty
gardens, in olive groves, the goats swank oily beards, the hammered scrolls
of horns, gnashing thyme thickets - the Acrocorinth
pale as whey to the south. From here
I make out the old acropolis extruding from the hill like blunted teeth; I probe,
till my eyes ache, for Aphrodite’s temple, nesting somewhere in the high
ridges. The Corinthian Gulf flickers
down a north-east road, and I know
this evening the sun swill strut there like a peacock trailing long feathers across
Harvey Acrocorinth 117
the water. Soon, I’ll walk back to my great uncle’s house.
He’ll empty wine from a barrel. He’ll tell me stories of his brother’s fist. I’ve seen the x-rays — my mother’s dented wrist, forearm — all the fractured
bones. And I’ll think of those hands, coaxing, on the vines; and I’ll think of a god with a fist-full of hail. I’ll drink the cool, bitter pink liquid, and currents
of sweetness will twist
through each mouthful.