Raven
In memoriam Edgar Allan Poe
Years like wings. What does the motionless raven remember?
What do the dead remember near the roots of trees?
Your hands had the color of the falling apple.
And this voice that always returns in a low tone.
Those who travel focus on the sail and the stars
hear the wind and beyond the wind the other sea
like a closed conch near them, they hear nothing
else, they don’t search among the shadows of the cypresses
for a lost person, a coin, they don’t question
looking at the raven on a dry tree branch what it remembers.
It stays motionless over my hours a bit higher
like the soul of an eyeless statue
a huge crowd has gathered inside this bird
a thousand people forgotten, vanished wrinkles
vacant embraces and laughter never completed
works stopped halfway, silent stations
a heavy slumber of golden drizzle.
It stays motionless. Stares at my hours. What does it remember?
There are many wounds in the invisible people, inside it
suspended passions yearning for the Second Coming
humble desires glued on the ground
children killed and women tired of the daybreak.
Does it weigh down the dry branch, does it weigh down
the roots of the yellow tree, over the shoulders
of the other people, the strange faces
who don’t dare touch a drop of water though sunken in the ground
does it weight down anywhere?
Your hands had the weight of hands in the water
in the sea caves, a light weight, without thought
with the motion that we suddenly push away an ugly thought
laying the pelagos to the far end of the horizon to the islands.
The plain is heavy after the rain;
what does the motionless black flame remembers against the gray sky
wedged between man and the memory of man
between a wound and the hand that injured it black spear
the plain darkened drinking the rain, the wind subsided
my own breath isn’t enough, who will shift it?
Within the memory, a chasm— a startled breast
between the shadows struggling to become man and woman again
between sleep and death motionless life.
Your hands always had a movement toward the sleep of pelagos
caressing the dream that slowly ascended the silky spider web
bringing into the sun a multitude of constellations
the closed eyelids the folded wings…
Manolis Aligizakis 