Tasos Livaditis – Selected Poems

Encounters

It was the night we offered them a big dinner: the guests sat
around the table silently, they all expected something, nobody
knew what, “perhaps God will have mercy on us” the host said
in a heavy voice and truly it was unbelievable that the night
passed and nothing happened. However at dawn when they
all raised their last glass their hands had the tired movement
of those who unknowingly had encountered the abominable
on their way.

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Twelve Narratives of the Gypsy

And there came the instrument
makers with their music creations
the full of rhythm like a dream
the singing gypsies came who
even forget their language
from one to the other country
that they traverse they change
their language too like their
staffs which they cut from
one or the other tree, their
language changes and as
they steal a few words from
each race they visit they add
them to their words like they
match the horses of their
carriages, which horses they
steal too whenever they
have the opportunity. Yet one
thing they never change: the
fatal result of their gypsy heart
and the soulless creation of
sound, of rhythm and dream
you’re their own language, their
only one their secret. The musical
gypsies have come.

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Red in Black

Hunters
Two triggers of men with rifles
one’s finger trembles squeezing
as he sees on cross-hairs
the lone buck
the other’s finger caressing his fear
targets body of poacher
who hunts off season
two triggers summoned
to synchronize the jerking
motion of pulling when tree leaves
fall dancing peripherally
toward earth and sound at the speed
of death travels to living beings
unfamiliarly dealing them
to Hades adobe, two triggers
squeezed, pulled, bullets guided to
the heart of the matter as another
exhibit over fireplace will add
to deadly aspiration of two men
shooting Thanatos to two hearts

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