POEM BY HARIS VLAVIANOS
GIFT FROM HEAVEN
What makes you believe that
I can still live in a room
from which you have removed
with certain gusto I may add
one of its four walls?
I agree the view is better —
not that one can see at the far end
Arno and the Ponte Vecchio —
but you think this major renovation
is a good reason for us to return
with our reignited courage
during the first act of the play?
And the four syllable word on the wine bottle
and the meat cooked with prunes
and the candles that supposedly repel the mosquitos
what do they truly mean?
And the young server
with the heavy accent
from which Russian novel
has he suddenly sprang up?
And how the fact that Adorno
as you tell me emphatically
had dined with Greta Garbo
in Los Angeles in 1944
and that his dog, Ali Baba — what a name
urinated onto her book
change anything?
Do you hear the rustle of the leaves
and the voices of the children
who come down our street
on their rollerblades?
Do you know that the message they carry
belongs to a future
you haven’t imagined?
Close your eyes for a while.
Sometimes is better to look at reality
without trying to estimate
in how many minutes the sun will go down
besides right now
the point isn’t
this particular sundown
but the gift it has given us.
Did you say — wasted years?
Don’t turn melancholy.
Is there ever a Paradise
that is not lost
at the end of the dream?
Manolis Aligizakis 