Greeks Bearing Gifts

The Greeks, it seems, can live happily
with degrees of bitterness—
their resin-sharp wine that lightens the evening
but needles the unwary throat; their olives,
dark as funerals, that commandeer the tongue,
then surrender to goat’s cheese, or bread;
halva’s lugubrious sweetness, subverted
by sesame seed.
A harshness that cuts both ways—
half-sating a hunger, amplifying a need.
Streams of argumentation keep rising
from coffee black as pitch. Swallowed by
Turk and Greek, it lights a fire in the head,
replacing old pharmacopoeias,
the season of the witch.

When the last Trojan horse was sent out to graze,
ships had more latitude; new countries
began to dissolve on the tongue, new words
to flavour the language. It came down to
attitude. Sailors traded off leisure for pay,
and the world discovered haste.
Now trade winds have taken over the skies,
everyone’s up for the taste.