If you asked me what I recall of the Minotaur’s labyrinth,
and the faded frescoes of rock-star bull-leapers, I would say:
it was my daughter’s blue and white checked dress,
which she pulled up all day, to inspect the band-aid on her knee;
and the fierce sun that we squinted past in every single photograph;
and the ginger stubble of the Ancient History teacher I ran away with
in the year after high school. But mostly I remember the stink
of cabbage from the neighbouring fields (sharp enough to kill Ulysses
and his legends, sufficient to repel Arthur Evans from his digs);
a miasma of stench, ripe as the stains on my canvas-bound Bury’s –
A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great.

Helen Thurloe

 

Helen Thurloe is a Sydney writer. Her poems have won national awards, and appear in several anthologies. Her first novel, Promising Azra, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2016.

© 2020