A bright new morning

No-one likes mornings more than I do. That's one of the things you take from two thousand years of being dead - a sound appreciation of sun, and fresh air. Especially angled watery sun that slants through dewy windows onto pillows crumpled by a girlish head of tawny hair.

In the old days, we were less specific about colour - why else did Homer (whose works, being an educated man, I naturally knew by heart) call the sea "wine-dark"? The sea looks nothing like wine, and I've drunk a lot of wine in my life, so I ought to know. But back then we weren't so pedantically gripped by facts, and by the chilly dictates of empiricism, so I shan't be ashamed to say that Ella's hair was the colour of grass, in this morning's light, and her bitten nails were like sprouting mushrooms, and her curved back was a sack of golden grain, spilling toward my eyes.

This is the morning of my new life - far from my beloved East, my cypresses and scented chambers, my fortresses and sea-ports and incense and fineries and dancing-girls and galley-slaves. But far too from Nabatean kings and angry daughters and the imperious Romans everywhere with their military sandals and constant demands.

This now, this damp and faraway life, this is the place to be. I don't look back. This is a bright new morning and the omens are fine!