Poppy, moon and star on upper arm

The jars came up from the harbour at Canopus with their wax still whole, and I have set them in the cool room behind the cistern, where you said they would keep. Mother asked after you twice. I told her you were learning to judge poppy oil by the moon, which she takes for a jest, though I did not tell her I half believed it myself.

The moon was thin as a paring the night before the boats arrived, and I sat up on the roof with the lamp put out, counting the small stars that gather beside the crescent. A ferryman on the quay had told me the orchard priests burn poppy heads at the dark of the month so the field will remember its colour. I laughed at him. Then I went up and watched, and the single star stood exactly where you had drawn it on the wax tablet, as if someone had pricked it there with a stylus.

The arch of the old gate at the Serapeum is still hung with rue for travellers, and I made the boy bring two sprigs of olive from the terrace to lay on either side of the stem you sketched. The flower on your tablet leans a little toward the ground, the way ours always do when they are heavy with seed. I thought that was a mistake until I saw the real ones bow the same way in the wind off the lake.

Come home before the sowing. I have left the lamp lit on the third step, and beneath the jar I have pressed one bloom flat between two tablets, so you can see the red has held. Mind the damp on the road from the ferry, and bring your own ink, because the Alexandrian stuff smears when it is wet.

Your brother, Lysandros