Byzantium Poem by Anthony Dalby

And now I open wide poised and yawning stretch apart
To become the awning
Before you stands the entrance
To slip through and enter
The dark irridescence of glowing cloth
And fold upon fold enfolds your feet
And sit and sip the sherbet
And sound the bells and pipes
And pass through on and on and in to darker spaces
And vaults leap higher and higher into half known secrets
Curved rib stones

Byzantine form and taste and line
Forms glow in candled light and flicker in the half world light
Tigers eye and lapis lazuli and the bluest glass burning within its furthest depths
And so the wings unfold and lines with incense rise
And meld with opalescent forms

And here opens out a secret lair of books
Of vellum and leather of bronze clasps.
Openings begin and each leaf unfurls upon a new world
Pages turn and open wide and on and in till space upon space unfurls.
Wider and wider higher, each a release from the one before
Yet further deeper higher
And incense curves around your form and lifts you up and rests you down
To close your eyes to voyage further