ON STAGE
3
What were you looking for? You look like a stammer.
You had just gotten up
leaving the bed sheets to freeze
and the avenging baths.
Drops of water flowed on your shoulders
on your belly
your feet bare on the soil
on the cut grass.
Those, other three
the faces of the daring Hecate.
They tried to take you with them.
Your eyes, two tragic conches
and you had on the nipples of your breasts
two small purple pebbles—
things of the stage,
I don’t know.
Those three bellowed
you stood nailed to the ground,
their gesturing pierced the air.
Servants brought them knives;
you stood nailed to the ground,
a cypress.
They pulled the knives from the sheaths
and aimed for a place to stab you.
Then and only then you cried:
‘Let whoever wants to come and sleep with me,
am I not the sea?’
Manolis 