A POEM WITH TWO CAMELS, TO GO

 

Two camels are, as everyone knows,

The attributes of St. Minas

Obliging anyone so attended

To patronize peddlers; the falsely accused,

Shady sides of streets and the city

Of Heraklion. Never mind why two camels

And I went walking in Seward Park

But I can tell you: falsely accused folk

Can get pretty rowdy late in the day;

Camels and peddlers don't get along

And Heraklion is still sore about falling

To the Ottomans in 1669. I remind them

This was at the end of a siege lasting

Twenty-one years but they don't care

And sneer that a three-cameled saint

Would have made them invincible.