Poems

David Mason: ‘The Kalderími’

The Kalderími The priest, white-bearded and blue-robed, rode down on donkey-back to do his sea-side shopping, and if you met him he would sermon you about the wars, the communist andártes who had smuggled guns on this old stone path. Be careful, or you’ll hear a charm in warnings, limits, admonitions. How many heads were lopped off here? How many Romeos and Juliets despaired themselves to suicide by hanging from a bridge in the ravine? These are the old stone ways of butchery, a wireless connectivity of villages climbing beyond sight on the mountain named for the fiery prophet. The…

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