As Brother

I’ve gone beyond the walls,
beyond the walls of Athens

to smoke my cigarette

with the Arabs, the Africans, and Persians.

Though I go not here to
turn on Athens,
to show no one the entrance into her,

but to be with these ones as other,
to smoke with them
as brother,
in the hours of the citrus sun,
the yellow, the gold, the white, and red,

for those of us with arms and legs.

– Poetry by W.T. tuqMairtin