Still Morning in Ioannina


The Pindos Mountains melt and fade

In morning haze across the lake.

On Ali Pasha’s flowered tomb

There lands a copper butterfly.


The crumbling stones which smell of sun

Are carved with verse from the Qur’an

And warm a lizard’s fretful skin.

It trembles as the air is still.


Before this rock became a Mosque,

Before this town became a town,

The mountains rose and shrank away,

The people came and built their graves.


The shadow of the minaret,

The silence of the fortress walls.

11 Comments to “Still Morning in Ioannina”

  1. That’s really great.

    Fantastic imagery.

  2. the stones smelling of the sun…cool detail, that….
    the still trembling air…nice
    my fav stanza is the before…it adds a level of mysticism to me…
    and stilling close…

  3. Wow! Wonderful scenery. The butterfly was perfectly vivid for me and the last verse rings immortally of our conceit as well as our frailty! Bravo!

  4. your words so easily take me to another place, filled with deep history
    and imagery i would much rather lose myself in, than the concrete i see everyday.
    ty for this.

  5. Loved the vividness of your description!

  6. The middle two stanzas my favourite, though I enjoyed the entire piece. The imagery was lovely you took me too the mountains.

  7. Beautiful piece touching all the senses… Good job!

  8. Great imagery.. and a time-swept creation..

  9. “The people came and built their graves…” Haunting image. Beautiful picture you have painted, Gavin

  10. Quite a pretty piece of writing.


  11. Dreamy, sultry visuals. Love it!

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: