POETRY – Identical Fugitive Octopus by Annie Freud
Identical Fugitive Octopus
He drove to the edge of the city and parked the Subaru
in a long street he remembered from previous visits.
Nothing had changed. The small shop that sold
lace collars and haberdashery was still there
and the hand-written price labels were exactly
as he remembered them, even the way the ink had faded.
The church bell sounded four o’clock and the air was full
of the smell of biscuits, overlaying the warm stink of drains.
A minute, scrofulous cat had followed him down
to the front, past the restaurants offering fasolakia
and kleftiko, depicted in colour under greying plastic,
and waited in hope on the corner while he trailed
around the stalls festooned with copies of the Evzones’ dress,
the stiff skirts, white stockings and pom-pommed shoes,
the eye, hand and foot of Michelangelo’s David,
the Colossus of Rhodes with his upturned prick,
a nereid with her hair half hiding her small breasts,
cross-legged on a scallop-shell, dinner plates
with curly-bearded Poseidon waving his trident
at the passing ships, and vases in every imaginable size,
painted with the identical, fugitive octopus,
and shelves of resin globes enclosing underwater scenes
of coral, shells and seaweed, treasure from wrecks.
He bought a bottle of Metaxa and a bag of macadamias,
a porno magazine and a pack of Lucky Strikes
and climbed the steps to his rented room
overlooking the harbour and lay on the bed, eating
and drinking, looking at the pictures that hung on the wall\;
the dolphin frescoes from the palace of Knossos
and the snow-capped peaks of the White Mountains.
