The Fatigue of Sunlight and Wine

Sun blind. A vast white arc of light that covers and exposes. Stone and skin are turned translucent. The soul of the place is exposed, burnt wide open by the screaming light, and we walk out into this. We step, with skin-burning steps, across crackling stone. In the roadside shrine, green water seethes with velvet stillness. Opposite the sun, the bell-clear blue rings out across the dome of the scalded sky. Midday and it can only get hotter; midday and all is stunned into stillness. And running over the white stone, a single line of blood, a droplet fallen and rolling from the wounded day. Its brilliance against the blank plane of limestone disturbs. All balance is gone and one staggering step is taken, an age between steps, an aching journey through the solid white day, under the clanging sky. Time stretches like a rusty coil, shedding iron dust onto the heat-swimming ground. The cup is raised; the wine wets the lips, pouring over the tongue to deluge the agony, dry throat. Explosion as the head and the light and the heat become one. And above and through all this, an extending plateau of sound, a thin mirage of noise, glistening, still and floating. Each sun-seared colour has its own note – an intangible tone that permeates this southern right-angled light. Where each splinter of sunlight strikes, there is a sound – from the mirror bright sky to the baked yellow soil; all is harmony, all separate. A choir more felt than heard, spreading like smoke between the olive trees, rising and settling the dust like passing footsteps. Its beat the pulse of blood in the ear, the sound of your heart beating against the burning ground where you lie.