Wheat Ears-Selected Poems

White Thoughts

Apollo’s temple at Delphi shivered, fallen

leaves that always reminded me

of the autumnal tree rustle, wishes became

soldiers coming back from the front lines

in coffins laid like spent bullets

gravestones made of marble, abundant

whiteness like my thoughts, palindromic

mind between the sea’s punishment

and death in a chapel where I met

people kneeling for thousands

of years, steel lined against steel

war after another war hunger at noon

and hunger during the night as long as

their coffers were always kept full

there I met their hatred for the first time

deep savage illusion that incised with

red letters in the wall of revenge

words such as: kill, destroy, decapitate

and I was raised in a Christian home

having the luxury of Christian piety

Tasos Livaditis-Poems, Volume II

Departure

Many a time I felt the need to speak but how could

I make it believable? Therefore I wasted my time

in silence and if I didn’t die it was to just retain that

final position so that no any other could suffer; more than

often, however, panic overtook me, especially when

I was going up from the basement, since I had seen

how troubling was the house leaning on darkness and

when we prepared our suitcases during the night I

wondered how they could travel; yet, when that quietness

spread around and I faced their pale faces I understood

and at that moment I saw her standing at the far end

and if we didn’t held the boy he would had run to her

while he hugged the forbidden.