Old Jaffa

Moments come that are not a viewing.

They are a listening into tones of light.

When the sun calls, the noise of seeing

faints behind an aural synesthesia.

Light works into substances, vibrating

into shadows of shadows, sounding angles

until the eyes change to different senses.

Bundles of light-sung shapes rise

as cubes of time holding echoes

touching echoes that interfere

and become complex harmonies.

This light pleads into structures, pulling

sentiments deeper than clayey sediments.

Light trembles into a liminal mood.

Ballads of sun in matter can build

staggered tones of momentous world.

Octaves glow as sung vignettes rising

beneath the Old Tragedian's eye.

Architecture dreams under the sun,

its memories refracting into gold.

While just looking at a photograph,

imagination hears unexpected vision.

I have never been to Old Jaffa.

I will never go to Old Jaffa, but...

I went anyway into a photograph of Old Jaffa,

a boat's view of the harbor becoming hillside

and a hundred buildings of staggered mystery

in the light glaring an ecstasy and absence.

I walk stunned through narrow streets,

an old quarter filled with sibilant tongues

that speak of glimmering fish, of heat

and of things I could never imagine.

Many sun-burnt ghosts brush past,

moving through a dream of Jaffa.

I will not leave until the sun goes.

This maze of houses swallows me in shadows

until I make it back to the harbor, to the railing.

I stare toward the far water changing its colors.

The afternoon brings an epigram on the wind:

being lost is better than ever being found.

Sunset now a gong rippling out its gold abysses.

The long waves curl like her tresses...

and I will never walk in Old Jaffa.

~ TB