Many years ago I was in Greece and for some reason I was spending a few days on my own - or rather with my friend Dimitri - at his mother’s house on the shores of the Saronic Gulf at a place called Kalloni.

Just around the corner, next to a salt-marsh which I knew to be the home of those strange birds known as squacco herons, a Romany family had moved in. Temporarily, of course. They were only there for a few days. This is a photo of the place where they camped under bits of old carpet - an image I snapped many years later.

Every now and again I’d see one of the Romany women come to the well owned by Dimitri’s mother - and the amazing grace with which she carried the stone water jug on her head never ceased to fascinate me. I think I scribbled some sort of poem at the time - it would probably have been far better than this distant memory…

The local villagers called the Romany people “yifty” which I see on the internet is spelled “giftoi” if you’re writing it down in a non-cyrillic way. So I’ve probably even got that wrong - but anyway, here’s my memory.

Woman strides twixt salt-marsh and sea,
So smooth in gliding gait, a dripping urn,
Aloft on sunlit summit of handsome head,
Neither sinks nor rises as she slinks and slips,
Silent, from the water-well.

In her pitcher, the mountain water motionless.
No wavelet stirs in that ancient amphora,
Not the width of a single, brown-blonde, hair
Does contents of crock ebb or flow.
Above the hip-swinging gait of gypsy girl.

Gravity plays no part in that elegant stride.
She slips, sidles, steals and seethes…
Across salt-dashed dazzle of marble shore
Where a breeze blows hot upon
The cerulean circuit of Saronic Gulf.

Her motion smooth untroubled, fleeting -
Flex of sea-mist above skerry,
Slow silent slipping of ice among bergs.
Yet nothing so frigid has cloaked
These limbs of languid liquidness.

Giftoi girl, forged,
In hellfire heat of eastern plain.
The seamless stride, slow flow of landmass,
Journey without ownership or frontier.
Walk from well, voyage of centuries.

And once, just once, I caught her eye,
Glimpsing eternity in that rootlessness.
The great eon-busting galaxy of never belonging.
Her glance, that fleeting smile,
Diminished me.

Husband saw the look which passed between us,
And offered the unpossessable, for cash,
Late that night in Cafe Neon,
Where he was drunk - and I, too young
And stiff and British, demurred.

Through glamour-gauze of pine-scent wine,
I could see that slow sway of hip,
That litheness of limb.
And this yearning youth did founder,
Shipwrecked with lust, that hot Greek night.

Stranded by one dark and distant glance,
Which ripped years from my quarter-century.
I laughed at his offer - and,
As the price came down and down,
The village boys laughed with me.

Rolling in resinated wine,
I was but flotsam or jetsam,
In Romany eyes that had seen
Ten thousand sunrises
Of never belonging.

You cannot haggle for a thing without boundary,
And the giftoi had covered continents.
Meanwhile I knew only
The hedgerow heritage
Of a shire-safe home.

A drowning man clutching
At a sofa-full
Of dreams
In a deluge
Made of mystery.

The giftoi girl,
Slips away from water-well,
On shore of Saronic Gulf.
And I never dared,
Walk with her.