A Memorandum for Antigone

Further to our meeting, my wish to brood
upon its memory queries your name,
whose vowels run like fingers over places
on a map. Reviving the legendary fame

of that blind beggar's daughter wandering
self-exiled, far from the towers
of her birth. A Mecca now for tourists
breeding postcards in her wake, like flowers

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that advertise a heroine's grave. Forsaking
a land of sleeping gods, your generation
seek their future in strange waters, like Jasons
dreaming of a multi-coloured fleece. In veneration

of their country's myths the old remain
bound by the legacy of age. Here, you are not
alone Antigone; I too am from an old house,
leaving the residue of twenty years to rot

in its crowded soil. Carefully, then. I trace
the echoes of your face and finding room
there for compassion, play at Hercules, lamenting
your half-forgotten father in his foreign tomb.

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