13. Ariadne’s gift
have you ever wandered off alone, my friend,
at siesta time
down some foreign dusty backstreet,
past the souk and the bazaar,
beyond the medina and into the warren,
to find yourself alone
at that hour
in some lonely empty square
with shuttered windows,
here alone
and alone here in melancholia,
and for a moment, maybe the merest moment,
your body knows that you truly are alone on this earth,
and ever more will be –
– well, my friend,
this is the strangeness of the hour,
familiar, yet half forgotten;
So – fearing the enigma of the infinite –
you scurry back to where humanity waits,
and all is known and all is knowable,
to the laughter, to the music, to the colour,
to the hustle and bustle,
of what you know, after all, is the real world.