After an Ode of Pindar | Colin Honnor

All roofed where doves cluster tranquil, walks under white columns
between crackle of throbbing pines, between mossed tombs
the true midday creates this fire
the sea, the sea, always renewed!
O recollect after this thought these thoughts
with profound contemplation of this haunt of gods
to meditate this absolute of stone, absolution
to become white doves of the tombstones, sweat their ammonite silence.
In and among cypress cicada and pine
their unlettered are now lettered, how
is not questioned, but as a bay breathes
like the sigh of a young girl or exhales
like sudden sea storm summoning a gale
a cupped bay sails its white sail across a stilled blue.

Colin Honnor is widely published in magazines in print and online, including: Bitterzoet, The Screech Owl, Eunoia Review, Crack the Spine, Poetry Bay, The Missing Slate, The Hour of Lead, Sentinel Journal, MessageinaBottle, Ataraxia, Miracle, InkSweatandTears, A New Ulster, The New Shetlander, Hark, Angle, Awen, Allegro and Inclement. He formerly edited Poetry and Audience, is a literary scholar, translator of modern European poetry and runs a fine arts press in the Cotswolds.