Mathios Paskalis Among the Roses
I’ve been smoking steadily since morning
if I stop the roses will embrace me
with thorns and fallen petals they will choke me
they grow crookedly, all of them with the same rose color
they stare; they wait to see someone; no one goes by
behind the smoke of my pipe I watch them
being scentless over a weary stem
in the other life a woman told me ‘you can touch this hand
and this rose is yours it’s yours you can take it
now or later, whenever you like’
I walk down the steps smoking still,
the roses walk down with me, excitedly
and in their manner they have something of the voice
at the root of a scream, there where the man
starts shouting ‘mother’ or ‘help’
or the small white words of love.
It’s a small garden full of roses
a few square meters descending with me
as I go down the steps, without sky;
and her aunt would tell her ‘Antigone you forgot your exercises today
at your age I never wore a corset, not in my time’.
Her aunt was of pitiful stature with veins in relief
many wrinkles around her ears an almost dead nose
but her words were always full of wisdom.
I saw her one day touching Antigone’s breast
like a small child stealing an apple.
Perhaps I’ll meet that woman now as I walk down?
When I left she said to me ‘who knows when we’ll meet again’
and then I read about her death in old newspapers
about Antigone’s marriage and Antigone’s daughter’s marriage
the steps down and my smoking without end
that leaves on my lips the taste of a haunted ship
with a mermaid crucified to the wheel while she was still beautiful.
Manolis Aligizakis 