The ancient streets of Plaka near the Acropolis are bewitching and resonate with the past. Sometimes you can sense the weight of centuries and the spirits of those who came before in the atmosphere around you. I tuned into this frequency and it inspired the poem.
Athens by Day
In Plaka the travertine streets are worn
slippery and pockmarked under our dusty sandals.
We make unpretty loops around broken marbles
and columns that once stood up for something.
The ruins are indifferent to us. Even the sun doesn’t
care for tourists or philosophers. At the Acropolis
Museum the Caryatides stand tall remembering
their former importance. Their stone hair is almost
intact and woven like a small miracle of gold
wildflowers. A coin drops from the unseen hand
of someone I’ll never know. I could be happy
if we lived in Paris. Every day I’d sit on a bench
in Place des Vosges and some days I’d pretend
to be young. Thoughts and time lead us nowhere.
Only the ghosts are always here for us. They visit
sometimes in a drift of goosebumps or the stir
of an unexpected breeze. Everything important
remains a secret. The ghosts won’t tell us
what eternity feels like. But they wait in a heavy
stillness or a taverna where we take refuge in
an emptiness we can’t explain. A dry leaf falls
out of nowhere. Suddenly I see your face in a way
I never did before. When they’re lonely the ghosts
take our hand as we circle narrow streets past
the Agora, up the hill to the bone white Acropolis
feeling certain we could never disappear
in the ancient nonchalance. Once you were
a god who walked in the courtyard of my heart.
Helen Mitsios is the ART + STYLE Editor for WONDERLUST.
A poet, writer, and university professor, she’s also editor of the forthcoming collection New Greek Voices: The Best Short Fiction from Greece.