SHAPE OF ABSENCE XXIX
How then, can time pass again with noisy steps
on the sidewalk? How can
people sit around the table again, slice their bread
and talk to each other
while the spoon hits the plate, the knife hits the glass
and the glass shines in the sunshine? A woman sings
in the room of the opposite house while she washes
her feet in a big bowl.
A young woman keeps two or three light-blue little islands
in her apron;
the shoe maker’s apprentice has tied his unravelled hair
with a string. How is it
that we hear and we see? And life can tell apart these
things of memory, and those things as hers — it tells
them apart along with all our pain of separation, and
all our guilt — bitter invincible life, may it live its life
with us
and without asking us, with that clever canniness that
does this, that we miss so much, that is more ours.
The ship has gone down on the horizon already —
leaving behind it a whistle like the shadow of a ship
like a different ship that floats across the space. How
is it?
Manolis Aligizakis 