Nostalgia for the Mediterranean

Here, at the heart of the Meseta,
the sea is only an invention of the sky.
And yet all it takes is a half-closed shutter,
the white silence of the controra,
for something to call me again.

The land slopes down towards the coast.
I see again whitewashed walls,
the violet shadow of bougainvillea,
dry esparto along the roadside,
the Levante wind drawing the lines taut.

Rome returns in another form:
the worn travertine of a threshold,
the sampietrini still warm in the evening.

Memory does not preserve cities,
but small textures: salt on the fingers,
oregano crushed between the palms,
a tablecloth stirred by the wind.

Then the wind turns East.

On the Bosphorus the fog erases
the opposite shore for a moment.
The tea burns through the thin glass,
someone calls from a boat,
a word escapes me while I translate it.

That is when the sea returns,
though I could not say which one.