Vision Of Odessa

The tea house overlooking the docks…

smoking the huqqua with the old men

wrinkled like leather tanned over the years…

their whole world aged with millennia of the

comings and goings of civilizations…

Smoke rises from the chimneys and the stacks

on the steamers anchored in the harbor.

Workmen and seamen in dark clothes are seen

as smoldering shapes animating the landscape.

We hear of the rest of the world haltingly…
there are newspapers…and gossip and rumor
that blend into the atmosphere hazily like the
smoke that rises in front of us. How can anything
change under this rock of our certainty? People
live and people die,and, here, death has a
certain logic.

We know of the wars and the slaughter…
we've heard the words, but like the indians
at Plymouth Rock that couldn't see the ships
coming in, because, to them they were like
UFO's to us, we do not know what that
slaughter is, so, 

The days continue into the nights, the lights
come on, the cafes glow with chatter and
intrigue of a minor key, We play backgammon
late into the night….the air is pure with seasoning
of smoke. The old men are not concerned

of what is past or passing, or, what may come to be.