I WONDER whether I can insist in some way that all these

things occurred. Where can I go? I asked myself as if I was

the one who chooses, yet, I kept on tiding up the rooms

since I was certain they would come, unless we had buried

them during the rainy days; (the last day of the corpse

continues incessantly),“who are you looking for?” I asked

“the homeowner” they tell me; I sighed and showed them

the opposite shadowy side,

      until I realized that this was my property which I could

slowly, painfully save and for this if one meets a few poor

dead people on the road they talk about the beggars who

got rich without knowing under their ragged overcoat how

hurtful their wings were.

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Poem by Kostas Karyotakis

SMILE

Although she never learned of it she cried

perhaps because she had to cry

perhaps because misfortune always comes.

Tonight the dusk is just a dream

the ravine remains enchanted

the rain stopped and the tired girl

lied onto the moist clover field

her parted lips two cherries

this way as deeply she breaths

her breasts ascent and descent

as if the most crisp April rose.

Sun rays flash through the clouds

and hide in her eyes, the lemon tree

drips moist onto her body

two diamonds stop onto her cheeks

you think she may be crying

as she smiles to the faraway sun.

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Immortality

And I swore before the blurry eyes

of my kin to cleanse their lot with 

the heartache I inherited, I promised

to search in their dirt for my immortality

I was to paint the bulbs of the earth black

and again to insert them in the soil

so they would sprout up like new

penises to enter hungry mounds

and to feel the ecstatic mixture of pain

and joyful cocktail of drugs

that put my consciousness to rest

to these I swore standing opposite

my kin’s secret grandeur                                      

when they begged for more,

such flimsy was their self esteem

and in their ridicule, in their viscera

I came to know

the lone glimpse of optimism

leading them to their self-destruction

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