This blue half circle of sea moving transparently on the sand as pale as salt was Cleopatra's hotel: here is a guesthouse built and broken utterly since an amorous modern prince lived in this scoured shell. Now from the ruined hive of a town the cherry-skinned soldiers stroll down to undress to idle on the white beach. Up there, the immensely long road goes by to Tripoli: the wind and dust reach the secrets of the whole poor town whose masks would still deceive a passer by, faces with sightless doors for eyes, with cracks like tears oozing at corners. A dead tank alone leans where the gossips stood. I see my feet like stones underwater. The logical little fish converge and nip the flesh imagining I am one of the dead. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WANDERINGS OF OISIN by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS LOW TIDE ON GRAND-PRE by BLISS CARMAN THE CHARACTER OF A GOOD PARSON by GEOFFREY CHAUCER WAR IS KIND: 21 by STEPHEN CRANE THAT SUCH HAVE DIED by EMILY DICKINSON THE JOURNEY by EMILY DICKINSON TO ANTHEA [WHO MAY COMMAND HIM ANYTHING] by ROBERT HERRICK SONNET PREFIXED TO 'NENNIO, OR A TREATISE OF NOBILITY' by EDMUND SPENSER |