Habitually Formed: Owed to Afaia

Aegina, 28th October 2008

Five leaf-falls come and go – what now comes to mind?
A chalk-blue sky, dark olive groves awaiting
harvest, softly, the sirocco abating.
Now daylight fades - no stars, no sounds, no wind;
clouds part, the crescent moon, a lemon rind
above the dull slate bay, illuminating
Afaia’s shrine; bar-room laughter, dogs barking,
beneath the harbour wall lovers entwined;
and how next day the rusty bus halted
at Mesagros. The goddess herself alighted
be-jeweled in patched denim, a slight figure
with soft brown ringlets; cinnamon-spiced
she stood before me. I felt exalted;
like she'd strewn gold before some old, blind beggar.

I wrote this in a couple of hours, a bit yesterday, finishing it today. Anne Bryant on the Facebook Sonnet Central site posted an 'October' sonnet challenge, and since the site is having a mini-revival after being a bit moribund for years I thought I'd show willing and pitch-in.

In all honesty, the world probably does not need or indeed deserve another wistful autumn sonnet. Hopefully someone feeling more inspired than me and can come up with an effort that challenges the stereotype, if TS could re-brand April as the 'cruelest month' then surely it must be possible to wrest Autumn from Keatsian glurge. Sadly I've just reinforced it!

All that being said, there is more than a grain of truth in this. Perhaps Aegina is my favourite place, I certainly hold dear the time Gill Laura and I spent on the island, five years ago now. My abiding memory is the kindness of Yanni and his sister who owned Hotel Rachel where we stayed. How he gave us a lift up to the temple of Afaia early in the morning - we had the place to ourselves, a wonderful evocative ruin on a maquis clad hill high above the Gulf of Saronica. Magic!

A couple of days later we were travelling on the clapped-out Mercedes bus which served the island. At a dusty crossroads a woman got on and sat in the seat opposite, It was difficult to judge her age, she had one of those sharp featured, bird-like faces that could have been oldish but looking young, or young but looking old. Although dressed youthfully in faded jeans and a patched denim jacket she did not seem poor as she sported a heavily plaited gold necklace, gold dangling ear-rings and lots of rings with coloured gem-stones in them. Her eyes were bright blue, but small, and her brown hair had copper streaks in it when it caught the sun. The woman was not beautiful, but had an aura about her.

I decided that she was Afaia herself putting in a brief appearance amongst we mortals, as minor Greek deities are wont to do. This notion was reinforced on reaching Aegina town. When the rest of us trooped slowly off the bus in line, Afaia simply disappeared; as I climbed down from the bus a distant, denim clad figure which may have been her disappeared into a dark alley more than fifty yards away. At that very moment the sun came out from behind a cloud and simultaneously the row of rear view mirrors on a phalanx of parked Vespas flashed like a lightening bolt. That had to be a wolf-whistle from Zeus!

So, considering all of the above, my sonnet effort is positively restrained!

We must go back to Greece soon, not just because it is lovely, but to show solidarity towards a gentle,kind people who have been treated brutally by global capitalism. Sometimes I think about Yanni and his family owned hotel and hope that he is weathering the crisis. I think a few photos are in order....