Agios Marcos

I love this small village and at one time thought about buying a house here. When I talked about it with an English woman who was married to a Corfiot she said, 'don't, it's slipping down the hill.' Many of the houses are deserted. I last looked around in the spring of 2003 when I took this photo.

It prompted the following poem.

TWO KILOMETRES

Two kilometres lie between the village on the hill

and the coastal strip where they strip

and turn and burn acres of flesh a worrying pink

colour-matched to the inflatables on display

outside the tourist shops.

In the village soft pink flowers against pink walls.

Over-ripe lemons lie rotting on the ground.

An insect hums.

Only a current of air moves through these empty homes

and an orange butterfly.

Shutters collapse,

paint peels.

The bare bones of old stonework glimpsed

through fig and walnut, peach and almond trees.

Silence has fallen like enchantment

on this village on the hill

and it is still

only two kilometres from the coastal strip.

On this trip nothing much had changed, this doorway had been  repainted, a few more houses are occupied, but the gates to the church yard were locked, presumably because the bell tower is no longer safe, and the houses that remain unoccupied are in an ever more fragile state.

I think it's a beautiful place.