As always, time’s sieve selects a myth from the facts,

the way the city—a pith spilled from the karst—

is pushed pack into the yellow haze

despite the ships’ urgency to its quayside 
as if to leave room for the farmer cutting terraces

from the bay’s blue potential,

a shepherd checking for rain: all of parish life and industry

flowing up and to the left against the frame. 
Over there, the local rag’s society hack

focuses on a celebrity shaking hands,

coaxing a raffle with a megaphone

watchful for someone significant. 
A school band, tuned slightly awry as their uniforms

trombone flaring over sausage-smoky booths

between which adolescents fumble, still half drawn

to the dodge-ems; parents wander past the jams and doilies, 
past the obeisant lavender, for the third time,

encyclopaedias and best-sellers parked like veterans

in the sun, brochures on weed control

blown to the perimeter.  A recruiter hands out air force caps. 
A group of young men tests their harness,

anxious to be off; kit creaks and chafes

against the pulpy air; momentarily they feel

their silly age, ostentatiously check the gauges. 
One falls from the sky; the others pass from our art

as from our sight, old men in leather jackets chatting,

barely interrupted by the squadron’s shadow

passing over the oval.