Sakhumi 1967

(Assembled from an account in

     Ryszard Kapucscinski's The Shadow

     of the Sun)

 In the modern city of palm trees and bougainvillea,

 close beside the ruins of an ancient Greek colony,

 some of it on land and some sunk beneath the sea,

 a hungry traveler dines in a restaurant built on rocks

 that plunge like divers headlong into the Black Sea

 and watches fat and lazy fish navigate underwater streets.