Sometimes my muse
falls silent
Angry with me,
perhaps, or on leave
Or busy repotting
tomato plants.
Suddenly my poems
are in languages
I don’t understand.
One winter
A very old muse
insisted
That I compose in
Linear B.
She would stalk
through my dreams
Half unclad – Crete is never cold –
Telling me in that
clattery tongue
How Pasiphae had always
been
A sweet and very
pleasant child.
