Manolis Anagnostakis, 13-12-43

13-12-43

Remember me telling you: when the boats whistle don’t
be in the port.
But the day that was leaving was ours and we didn’t
want to ever let it go
A bitter handkerchief will greet the tedium of return.
It really was raining a lot and the streets were deserted
With a delicate, vaguely autumnal flavor
Closed windows and people so forgotten
– Why did they all leave us? Why did they all leave us?
I was clasping your hands
And there was nothing strange in my cry.

. . . One day we’ll leave noiselessly and we’ll roam
Through roaring towns and over desolate seas
With but one desire burning on our lips
It is love that we sought and they denied it to us
You forgot about our tears, our joys and our memories
Greeting while sails rippling in the wind
And maybe there’s nothing else left for us to remember.

The anguished Why heaves up in my soul
I suck in the air of loneliness and desertion
I knock on the walls of my damp prison and I don’t
expect an answer
No one will ever touch the extent of my affection
and sadness.

And you’re waiting for a letter which doesn’t come
A far-off voice revolves in your memory and fades away
While a mirror gloomily measures your face
Our lost ignorance, our lost wings.


Andreas Embiricos, Winter Grapes

Winter Grapes

They took away her toys and her lover. Well then she bowed her head and almost died. But her thirteen destinies like her fourteen years smote the fleeing calamities. No one spoke. No one ran to protect her against the overseas sharks which had already cast an evil shadow over her like a fly staring with malice on a diamond or a land enchanted. And so this story was heartlessly forgotten as always happens when a forest ranger forgets his thunderbolt in the woods.



Constantine Cavafy, Walls

Walls

Without consideration, without pity, without shame
they have built great and high walls around me.

And now I sit here and despair.
I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.
Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.

But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.
Imperceptibly they shut me from the outside world.


Constantine Cavafy, The City

The City

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.

How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”
You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You’ll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.
Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.


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