{"id":588,"date":"2025-06-20T07:56:34","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T07:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/?p=588"},"modified":"2025-06-20T08:28:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T08:28:23","slug":"the-albanian-canto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/20\/the-albanian-canto\/","title":{"rendered":"The Albanian Canto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>July 2022<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">I\n\nBlue skies shimmer\n\nHalf border, all soft\n\nAnd into the pillow lands we go.\n\nII\n\nSkyborn cotton seas\n\nWe leave behind.\n\nIII\n\nThe grid of the possible\n\nStretches laconic beneath.\n\nAncient secrets, modern woes\n\nMake furdid journey-crossings.\n\nIV\n\nGlitter-castle crumbles\n\nInto the purple slate of the sky\n\nIts fire lights reappear\n\nSecond after second.\n\nV\n\nFloors wrapped in golden foil\n\nAnd dusty redden rooves. \n\nBetween the lacuna of views\n\nHearts jump, minds lurch \n\nAnd before sweet seconds have passed \n\nIn the shadow peril of a holiday gone wrong \n\nThe Greek has found his footing. \n\nVI\n\nAs soft as the touch of your skin\n\nMeet ripples recede\n\nInto bluegrey depths\n\nThe suede of salt \n\n- a boat cuts through\n\nhoisted up onto limp\u00e9d metal legs\n\nIt flies close to flat, quivering grounds\n\nThe peaks recede\n\nLots in colours of air \n\nWrinkled cloths draped over\n\nStony cheek. \n\nVII\n\nThe crags of a broken place\n\nBoulder-hewn, peer up over the skyline\n\nA dark, rich mass\n\nof cuttlefish bo\n\nrn.\n\nTwinkles, once eerie\n\nNow sing with the music\n\nArabesque, featureless fires\n\nThe riffs of abandon\n\nOf a familiar mystery\n\nOf a known unknown.\n\nThis is a warm country\n\nA heartfelt country\n\nA place where I can go\n\nAnd toe the line between angst and lost\n\ndelusions of a time that was never mine.\n\nI find moments, that peer through\n\nGolden sun-sparkles on granite, littered patios\n\nPieces of a strange substance\n\nThat float in the Styx.\n\nI find, on my back,\n\nEnveloped in the eversoft waters\n\nA quiet. A quiet that has not known me\n\nSince I changed my name to Progression\n\nSince I absolved and abstracted away, and now\n\nWhen I lie in the sun and dream erotic dreams\n\nThe beads on my forehead are not trepid, but bliss\n\nThe shakes are mistakes, and not victories\n\nMy resolve is lateral, latent, yawning sideways\n\nAcross lazy hills\n\nThat plunge out of leary cityscapes\n\nIt is a cool sip\n\nFrom the plumbox\n\nIt is a depth, a life,\n\nA mental wander to an Atlantic,\n\nBuried under virii.\n\nVIII\n\nBlue and yellow\n\nAre the first colours. \n\nThe liquid shade\n\nMakes body, strength, growth \n\nInto softness. \n\nIt dissolves away mountains\n\nBuries rocks beneath sight\n\nXI\n\nThe perfect curve\n\nOf molten iron \n\nComplete, in the sky\n\nLooks over the great sameness. \n\nWith tiny traces, white flies\n\nSkip across the water. \n\nThe tree \n\nCowers back \n\nFrom the yellowgray castle cliffs\n\nIts stones scattered\n\nInto spider lines. \n\nIt was the fierce hum of energy\n\nThat found me. \n\nAmidst a kind of massive, empty vessel\n\nOf people, of things, \n\nOf water and air \n\nThat was all. \n\nIt was the bleakness behind\n\nEach day of the small. Every\n\nAct which seemed only to flow from another. It \n\nCame and went behind the surface of the landscape \n\nLike the second lens in a camera, at one time close and at another focus, so so far. \n\nIt was hidden in the minutia of details. There was no container. Only a vast thing which made everything. A \n\nKind of energy in perception. It did not build not structure - for there was no space betwixt its mighty tresses. It only was. \n\nThis was the place where lights lose dimension, becoming tiny odd sequins on shapen dress. The two mounds of the hills, bare of foliage, rose like breasts above the white jungle of the city. The peak of the most distant mountain rose like a nose. \n\nHere it was that I saw the great thing behind things. The simplicity of it all. The irreducible that finds its way into every rounded figure. That extra object that cannot be accounted for. We were standing right in it. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The grid of the possible stretches laconic beneath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,144],"tags":[141,74,142,139,148,138],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-poetry","tag-memory","tag-nature","tag-temporality","tag-transcendence","tag-transformation","tag-travel","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveribanks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}