The Dardanelles (Hero and Leander at 60)By Greg Sendi
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Again into the choppy sound,
the old boy wades up to his thickened waist,
then with a soft plop like a portly otter,
he melts into the water.
His body isn’t what it was.
He tore a knee one winter. When he swims,
a dull and aggravating double-click
scansions on every kick.
He is beset with ocean scars--
a dent behind one ear where once he caught
an oar. He’s lost a toe. As you might guess.
both shoulders are a mess.
Despite all these, he starts to crawl
again into the narrows, pull by pull,
each sweeping arm betokening renewal
under the selfsame jewel
that waggled like the pendant drop
of sweat from off her overhanging lip
into a kiss the fervid summer night
they first coiled in delight.
The merchant wives of Abydos
commissioned something like a shrine to them
near where he disappears, a plaster thing,
some slushy rendering
set in a beachward underpass,
a place where lovers now for all this time
have come to carve their marks, have sighed
and lord knows what beside,
built by a Persian bricklayer
in haste before one Aphrodisia,
who put to gainful use some surplus mortar
adjacent to the quarter
where afterward the itchy young
might drift to town and browse the stalls
for curios then to the canteen by the pier
for tuna melts and beer.
It shows the moment in the tale
she wails to find his pale exquisite corpse.
entangled in the kelp beside the water.
The truth, of course, is odder.
In fact, his crossings never stopped.
The fetching western stars still fetch him on.
Contrary to the branding of the town,
her lover did not drown,
and having cleared the channel once
then twice, then half a dozen nights,
and back again across the salty slough--
Well, it’s been decades now.
Not often as before, lord knows,
but always and again in time. Some nights
he wobbles to the shore and, through the damp,
squints where her tower lamp
once shone but hasn’t now for years,
and there he rages at the whelming tide.
He weighs against the blind remorseless deep
a preference for sleep.
But every dusk the syruped sun
will sink again behind her cloistered home
and with the evening stars his sense is pearled
around her newer world.
For her part, thinking day to day,
she’s never sure what fellow may arrive,
(if he arrives). She lays out towels, dry clothes
and liniments. She knows
he’ll want some food and shepherd’s tea
reheating on a grate above the old
patinaed lamp. And when she reappears
to him (if she appears)
she’ll bring her old ceremonial comb
to tease the sea lice from his tangled beard.
So over again in little ways
they will relive their days
and silently, by turns, forgive
each other—he for her admonishments,
she for his recklessness and errancy--
and finally for the sea,
that waggles in a brackish drop
from off his silvered overhanging lip
into a kiss, as they by lanternlight
rehazard the night.
the old boy wades up to his thickened waist,
then with a soft plop like a portly otter,
he melts into the water.
His body isn’t what it was.
He tore a knee one winter. When he swims,
a dull and aggravating double-click
scansions on every kick.
He is beset with ocean scars--
a dent behind one ear where once he caught
an oar. He’s lost a toe. As you might guess.
both shoulders are a mess.
Despite all these, he starts to crawl
again into the narrows, pull by pull,
each sweeping arm betokening renewal
under the selfsame jewel
that waggled like the pendant drop
of sweat from off her overhanging lip
into a kiss the fervid summer night
they first coiled in delight.
The merchant wives of Abydos
commissioned something like a shrine to them
near where he disappears, a plaster thing,
some slushy rendering
set in a beachward underpass,
a place where lovers now for all this time
have come to carve their marks, have sighed
and lord knows what beside,
built by a Persian bricklayer
in haste before one Aphrodisia,
who put to gainful use some surplus mortar
adjacent to the quarter
where afterward the itchy young
might drift to town and browse the stalls
for curios then to the canteen by the pier
for tuna melts and beer.
It shows the moment in the tale
she wails to find his pale exquisite corpse.
entangled in the kelp beside the water.
The truth, of course, is odder.
In fact, his crossings never stopped.
The fetching western stars still fetch him on.
Contrary to the branding of the town,
her lover did not drown,
and having cleared the channel once
then twice, then half a dozen nights,
and back again across the salty slough--
Well, it’s been decades now.
Not often as before, lord knows,
but always and again in time. Some nights
he wobbles to the shore and, through the damp,
squints where her tower lamp
once shone but hasn’t now for years,
and there he rages at the whelming tide.
He weighs against the blind remorseless deep
a preference for sleep.
But every dusk the syruped sun
will sink again behind her cloistered home
and with the evening stars his sense is pearled
around her newer world.
For her part, thinking day to day,
she’s never sure what fellow may arrive,
(if he arrives). She lays out towels, dry clothes
and liniments. She knows
he’ll want some food and shepherd’s tea
reheating on a grate above the old
patinaed lamp. And when she reappears
to him (if she appears)
she’ll bring her old ceremonial comb
to tease the sea lice from his tangled beard.
So over again in little ways
they will relive their days
and silently, by turns, forgive
each other—he for her admonishments,
she for his recklessness and errancy--
and finally for the sea,
that waggles in a brackish drop
from off his silvered overhanging lip
into a kiss, as they by lanternlight
rehazard the night.
Greg Sendi lives in and writes from the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago where, according to a recent headline, “only the weird survive.” Recently his poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in a wide range of literary publications, including Apricity, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, The Briar Cliff Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Clarion, CONSEQUENCE, Ekstasis, Flashes of Brilliance, Free State Review, Great Lakes Review, The Headlight Review, Image, The Masters Review, New American Legends, Plume, Pulp Literature, San Antonio Review, Sparks of Calliope, upstreet and others. His 2020 short story “Two Not Touch” was shortlisted for the 2021 Driftwood Press Adrift short story competition. His 2022 poems “A Compass for Ariadne” and “Bottom” were selected as finalists for the 2023 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Contest.