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Other entries in Lattakia

Qala'at al Saladin

We hired a minibus for five of us and headed north... to Saladin's castle and on to Aleppo. The mountains and countryside wooed me once again -

familiar bones rise up in the distance:

a dry pie-crust ridge along the caking desert.

And as we travelled further north, the land became greener.... finally we reached the castle. It is nearish to Lattakia and is very worth the long climb up winding roads. It is a 13 century building carved into rock so convincingly that it seems to slowly emerge as part of the stone.

secrets shiver through a coniferous collar

a ruffling circumambulation winding round

from base to stony peak

a dance of remembrance capped by a castle-crown.

I climbed my way through the confusion of ruins and found a vantage point in the highest tower.

sitting at the tower window

i take in paradise:

the balmy wind blasting across the aperture

drowns out the metallic call of the cicidas with its roar

and beyond these sounds the land folds and parts,

soft mountains retire their feet

peacefully greeting the edge of a pale stretch of blue,

the whole scene framed here and there with the odd scrape

of a painter's tool-

grey slate strokes amid the evergreen.

and above, a hazey mist lowers its weight over the canvas;

a pallid, lacklustre blurring the vision

as if concealing secrets.

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