Neighborhood Afternoon
The train that passed an hour ago cut the rain in two.
A bit of smoke remains hanging onto the afternoon
like a dishevelled hair-piece of an actor, moist from
the dampness
hanging on the wall, perhaps, king Lear had worn it
that night with the tempest. When we travelled along
the deserted road, Alexis stayed behind collecting
wild vegetables and the pale dusk was shining on us
like the faded window shutter of the deserted house
in the wind. Someone passed by with a ladder
on his shoulders — no he wasn’t planning to climb up
and light the lamp of the moon — these things were
forgotten, far away, behind the mountains — like
a broken car left in the muddy road — it serves
no other purpose, it only obstructs the passing, and
men with their carts curse it when their thin horses
stumble upon it.
It was cold. We hurried to return home.
Soon as we locked the door we heard the first shots
in the road.
By now you have calculated what you took, what you gave.
There are lots of fallen leaves in the little forest.
The silence that would sing, as you claimed, resembles
the taxidermy crane on the dusty shelf of the school.
It won’t talk.
The parish priest died of hunger.
The lamppost supervisor was found dead face down in front
of his door.
He never got up again. The carts won’t ever carry fruits
again
they’re to carry the dead. The knife sharpener was found
with his head over his sharpening wheel last night,
like someone who looks down in the well and
the well is deep and black — you see nothing in it.
It’s very cold this year. It’ll snow.
When you tear off a page from the calendar it’s as if
you open a window during the night in a foreign
snowed up city.
You don’t recognize the place. How bitter is the table
without bread — like the sky in a foreign land without
sun — and these plates resemble the locked up
houses of the suburbs when autumn comes, when
you see them through the windows of the train, over the hill
returning again to the city after your summer holidays
and these utensils resemble garden railings moistened
by long gone summers.
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 