ENCOUNTER
The light has a yellow shade on the facades of the houses.
The shadow of the leafless trees on the walls and in the street
resemble the shadow of foreign soldiers with machine guns.
The shadows have changed
the voices have changed — they’ve become hesitant, like
someone who is trying to find a street number and makes two
steps, looks at the window, where is the doorbell? What
sound would the doorbell make in the hallway with
the unfamiliar stairs?
When you say tomorrow is as if you want to console someone.
You don’t talk. The rooms feel sleepy in the silence.
The fingertips of silence remain on the shelves, the chairs,
the railings of the bed, like a sick woman who gets up
in the night to get a glass of water. She can’t stand. She leans
on the furniture, she trips on her nighty and falls again
on her bed before she finds the water pitcher.
We were thirsty.
Loneliness never had a glass of water.
Her trembling fingertips still stay on the dusty surfaces.
Back then we had time. We watered the rose-garden.
We chit-chatted.
It isn’t the same anymore. Now you count words and colours.
You can’t establish their weight.
Alice died. She will never be in our company anymore,
as during those afternoons when we dreamed of things.
Her summer shoes
will remain under her bed like two white dead birds and
her little watch, stopped, on the empty table, like a star
you see through the window shutters of the desolate
house.
There is no time now. We have to find some new names
that can stand firmly on their feet
when all memories kneel during the night.
Every evening the neighbourhood covers itself with its blanket
and looks like a kneed bread that has risen. And the old men
sit by the door step, they reminiscent, they smile
and the veins of their thin arms
look like trees ready to bloom.
You’re right. Very good. Lie down for a while.
The nails of the night are black.
The joining eyebrows of the horizon black. It’s cold.
You want me to put my overcoat over your legs?
Your humble shoes are splattered with asbestos.
The leaves of our small lemon tree wilt slowly in
the garden
as the bus tickets from our past expeditions to the shore
get wilted in the pockets of our summer
pants.
Now you can’t finish your day like you finish smoking
your cigarette.
It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. Someone thinks
that he doesn’t have anything. He unravels the sacks of clouds;
he doesn’t find any star to pin his heart to its place.
The wind always perks up at midnight. The houses buzz.
The posters from last year’s movies flutter on the walls
and all the proclamations from the occupation years. We
have to find something, to say yes to something
that tells you no,
to place a monad in front of a line of zeros to become
a thousand or a million or a billion.
And when we look at each other in a sad way
it’s happiness that we look at each other. Go to sleep.
Tomorrow we’ll find some bread, my brother.
We’ll find the light that dries up the road.
Alice dyes our ripped shirts in a piece of sky, to use
when we’ll sew our new flags. The stars grow slowly bigger
like the beard on the face of our beloved friend.
Your face looks so sweet and strong while you sleep —
your chin, so strong, certain.
Manolis 