During a wintery, rain-swept circular journey around Germany I’ve found such amazing friendship, warmth and connection of heart to finish a poem about my trip to Delfi. The scenery there couldn’t be more contrasting with the damp soil and towering forests of the German countryside, the dark afternoons and efficient streets of the cities… but it took me back to this treasure of the ancient, which I was reminded is an architectural symbol of the feminine, the ancient Greek name Delfi meaning ‘womb’.

Sea-level 
From Galaxidi, an Apollonian sky

Shifts, plumes and beckons

Over where distant Delfi glitters,

Pulsing gently under the dazzle;

White egg-shell crumbled

Into a red and olive palm,

A giant up-turned hand,

Hanging legs of fertile valley.

Mountain village:

Old broken porcelain

Of discarded doll’s house;

This childish image swims

Through a smudge of tears,

Rainbowed by the lens

Of the rumbling bus window;

The bumping road a stairway

To my own forgotten attic.

The ruins:

Black then grey then black,

The wing and underwing

Throw shadows against

The light, a unison of flight,

One seraphim of sound,

Spilling messy, drunken swirls

Onto the dedicated ground;

Nature’s own dancing shaman.

The offering:

Temple, amphitheatre, stadium,

And the thousand treasures

Borne up from the ancient soil;

All cast a flame of praise —

My votive appearing at my feet,

As if cast from the heavens —

A shock of golden crocuses,

Racing torches of nature’s glory.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν: *

To feel under foot and heart

A culture unmade to dust,

Is to descend to earth;

To see a livelihood or love

Blown as a feather ‘gainst sky

Is to know thyself again,

These the hands upon the plough,

This the voice that doesn’t turn back.