Air redolent with herb.
Marrow bone, leg of lamb, tenderloin
bound with red string. Travel makes you wise—
tomorrow I fly, but today, labyrinth of stalls,
June through cracks in wood-beam ceiling,
gold-glass shadows trampled under hurried feet.
Talking, tasting, people pushing past; sawdust, road
grit carried in from street. Harlan, the Egg Man, died
November eleven, a solemn day made sober by
handwritten note: Seven months Anniversary
of passing. Sixty-two years his fold-out table,
his pyramid of yolks, this frown-face photo torn
from grease-stained magazine. Deli-pink salmon, silver
sardines. Vinyl tablecloth: red rose, green leaf—long trays
of cupcakes and cookies. Barrel of coffee. Case of loose
black tea. Mango, grape, orange juice in cooler to slake
heat-wave thirst, but does not console against this shoving.
I know the names of merchants, their far-fetched stories.
Hermes, the fish guy, from the Danforth, and before that,
Mytilene. “No trout today?” he asks. “No tilapia or tuna?”
Tight-lid barrels etiolate dry oats. Young man at cash,
world-weary, indifferent to my small purchase of green apples.
Tomorrow no parcels or World Famous Pea Meal, no grey bin
heaped with entrails from Seafront Fish. Tomorrow is spice
market, feta and olives, religion mixed with politics. Adieu brick
and concrete, oranges in crates, crisp red grapes, overflowing
barrels. Farewell hog-town brick; soup-bone and flies; pig
hocks on silver hook. Tomorrow, unbound, unwound,
ample wax wings to Crete.
