Annotations

Each day after sunrise he walks to the workshop-

like his father before him, and his father too –

the slap of sandalled feet on heat-baked stone,

the smell of blossom, a plate-blue sky. He greets

his neighbours with a smile. In the distance

a wild dog barks.

He sits straight-backed, lays out pointed tools

the way a surgeon might – neat as soldiers.

He likes hot metal, the smell, the way it yields

to his touch. Under deft fingers gold butterflies dance;

flowers bloom; silvery moons wax and wane,

then wax again; bright dragonflies flap two pairs of wings.

He likes the tiny loops and curls – he’d decorate

his house in this, drape his wife in fine-spun gold;

her skin wrinkled by sun, in simple cotton dress,

her only jewellery a plain gold band, worn thin.

He imagines the women who will wear

what he has made, clear-eyed, bird-boned, unlined skin

warming the metal his hands caress.