I roll a marble down Market Street
from the hillside
looking over the dusty city
while the sun sets.
It finds a central channel in the cobbled street
and rolls beyond my seeing

past the Kurdish boy on the curb
plucking a tick from his stiff
homespun trousers.
The boy chews a sliver of wild onion grass
he has picked from the feral garden
behind the abandoned mosque

my marble passes now.  Across the street Kastorides
stamps the tin lids on liter cans of olive oil
bearing his name.
From the corner of his eye, he sees the flash of my marble
like a wet pea, wonders when they will pave over Market Street
in macadam.  He shouts for Andrei,  
out of earshot,

marking cards in the alley behind the coffee shop
downstairs from the flat of the student
who glances from the yellowed wall clock
to the Swatch watch on his wrist, then tenderly
lifts the flap of his haversack to peer inside.
He has smoked his last cigarette,
is poking through the butts in the ashtray for a long one
when the phone rings — only once.
The student pulls a sweatshirt
over his bare torso, grabs the haversack

and dashes out.  In the street he sees my marble,
almost slips on it in fact, and stops to watch it
running down its course toward the fountain in the square.
The driver of the truck, distracted by fears of his wife
and blinded in one eye
by a speck of dust which was once a dog’s skin,
takes the corner too hard,
the left front tire giving imperceptibly
over the rolling marble.