The Coastal Path

POETRY The Coastal Path by Eleni Kefala for Colin McEwan I heard the news a few days ago we hadn’t spoken in nearly two years it was a Tuesday in June you wrote me you’d arrived you checked the weather “Maybe we could do the walk,” you said, “before the storm comes.” Within two hours you were here in your hiking clothes we ascended the hill the slope full of grass down below the deep blue sea the low tide had uncovered the black of the depths. You talked endlessly as though you were drunk about the sedimentary rocks that stuck out like spikes and formed small pools on the seafloor about layers of carbon, limestone and sandstone that prehistoric earthquakes compressed and molded into a wrinkled carpet about the basalt stack called the Rock and Spindle, the child of a volcano which erupted millions of years ago and cooled into a spinning wheel among the ashes. Eleni Kefala has published two books of poetry, Memory and Variations (2007), which was shortlisted for the Diavazo Literary Prize in Greece (firsttime author), and Time Stitches (2013), which received the State Prize for Poetry in Cyprus. Her work has been translated into English, Italian, French, Turkish, and Bulgarian. 36 WLT SUMMER 2020 After two hours we took the road back. You had your gaze fixed on the sea and the sun burned strangely. Just as we descended to the coast “A day for swimming!” you shouted and I began to laugh only madmen leaped into these waters (I don’t remember if I said it or just thought it). You threw your bag on a mossy rock and walked barefoot your footprints behind you crushed the ridged sand until your silhouette was nearly lost in the distance between us. From your movements I figured you had stripped off your clothes you advanced a bit raised your hands and you dove beneath the freezing water naked. You almost faded from view. I was thinking recently about how we had lost touch and how I had wanted to tell you that every time I descend to the coast at low tide just before nightfall when there’s no one else around (it’s going on one month now that we’ve had to avoid each other like the plague) I see you standing for a moment naked on the beach and then slowly enter the freezing water and lose yourself into the horizon. Translation from the Greek By Adam J. Goldwyn Adam J. Goldwyn is an associate professor of English at North Dakota State University and author of Byzantine Ecocriticism: Women, Nature, and Power in the Medieval Greek Romance (2018). His interview with Zisis Ainalis appears on page 44. left page: East Sands at low tide right page: Rock and Spindle WORLDLIT.ORG 37 PHOTOS PROVIDED BY ELENI KEFALA

Art · Art history · Literature · Poetry · Coastal and Marine Management · History · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies · Transboundary Water Resource Management · Geology