Respite in York: Two Views

The ruined tower outside.

The comfort inside.

I'd caught that sore throat on the plane from Frankfurt, and so needed a respite from walking York's stone walls . . . .

Beach Salad

Beach salad.

(See Sappho on "beach rubble" via Mary Barnard.)

Hollow-eyed,

Tight-lipped:

This fish . . . .

Garnish for gulls.

Someone else's tower.

Rock on.

Fisherman setting forth.

My clayfellow Aegir . . . .

Flow.

 Ducks-in-a-row.

Moya Cannon: "Isolde's Tower, Essex Quay"

ISOLDE'S TOWER, ESSEX QUAY

It is our fictions which make us real.
--Robert Kroetch

Is there no end
to what can be dug up
out of the mud of a riverbank,

no end
to what can be dug up
out of the floodplains of a language?

This is no more
than the sunken stump
of a watchtower on a city wall,
built long after any Isolde might have lived,
built over since a dozen times,
uncovered now in some new work--
a tower's old root in black water
behind a Dublin bus stop;

and the story is no more than a story.
Tristan drifted in here on the tide to be healed,
taken in because of his music,
and a long yarn spun on
of which they'd say--

Had not the lovers of whom this story tells
Endured sorrow for the sake of love
They would never have comforted so many.