The Phoenicians

If at night on a piece of paper

I write now it is night

and I sleep, when I wake

it will be a lie. But when

does truth leave? Like wings

in a dream didn’t it have lift

and dark body? The alphabet

and its first shape we owe

to the Phoenicians. First

to place wood on water

and trust their weight to it,

they streamed across

the Mediterranean like electricity

with their purple sails. Up beaches

no foot had touched, they tugged

those vessels to rest. Saffron-eaters gold

with hope, they let fall over

the horizon their own lands

like a sheet slipping off

a girl’s hips. In the dawn

a vista of the sea as clean

as blood. Never in the same place

twice, they began to write.