Teaching

And Themis was put in a dark dungeon

while I faced my kin’s delirious eyes

yet, though I had much to say,

I kept silent, momentarily, to give

time to their simple-mindedness 

bubbling along with the creek’s murmur

innocent smile of child upon which

I entrusted my hope to rediscover justice

with spring flowers rejuvenating

the veins of impeccable Eros

my distraught friends remained imprisoned

and I, dressed in rags, walked over the lands,

and being soft-spoken and with new symbols

with new follies and  new anecdotes,

I tried to revert the beliefs of

new Judases born with sharpened teeth

ready to devour each other

nothing to leave for the winds

the rightful inheritors of my teachings

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SHAPE OF ABSENCE  XXV

The distance lengthened between hands. People in love

don’t join hands anymore, not to reveal their lonely frost,

               afraid that

the cry of absence might be heard from their joined hands.

               They remain like that

as if in a dark tunnel gazing the opposite time

or the distant, vacant tables

that have changed shape and place to a solid silence.

               Only

the alarm clock on the night table,

like the eye of an adult that has grown before its time,

shows a familiar time, unapproachable, already outdated;

and slowly-slowly death withers

like a unused forgiveness. 

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POEM BY IOULITA ILIOPOULOS

CITY OF MUSIC

Small, multicolored musical squares

cobblestoned, where you step and

new sounds break up in the air

one night wearing a petticoat

and with a green dome on its hair

the night that turned into dawn

a band of light you passed over me

and closing my eyes as if feathers

a yellow night that turns into salinity

the river drop by drop

persistently persistent little lights like kisses

in her tiny hands as if of a marionette

a crypt, a fan, a voice

climbing slowly up in the air

and the elongated verdure on the ground

caresses as if silence, in a huge café where

the sounds go around in circles.

Trays with small glasses and sweets, gold signs

—which truth do the clocks count? —

music, you say.

A pink hydrangea and through the open window

a big heater made of porcelain and in very small letters

Salzburg of the nineteen hundred forever

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