The Hotel Brown Poems

1. Above every seaward-facing window
    of the Hotel Brown is a canopy. At night
    the perfumes of the garden will delight you . . .

    It is a good place to fall in love
    and a good place to write, though neither
    is obligatory. You must, however,

    praise the light, the changing colours
    of the sea at dawn and dusk: these are
    the divinities of the place. Amen.

2. Once in the cool, blue restaurant
    of the Hotel Brown a friend said to me, -
    'You don't realise how much your openness
    frightens people: it hits them like a wave,'

    and I smiled, not because his words
    amused me, but because the scent of peppers
    grilling in the kitchen overwhelmed me.
...