The Last Day
It was a cloudy day. No one could decide the wind was blowing softly
‘Not gregali cirocco’ someone said.
Some slender cypresses nailed to the slope and the sea, further,
gray with gleaming pools.
The soldiers presented arms as it started to drizzle.
‘Not gregali cirocco’ was the only decision heard.
Yet we knew that by the next dawn we would be
left with nothing, neither the woman next to us drinking sleep
nor the memory that we were once men
nothing at all by the next dawn.
‘This wind brings to mind spring’ my friend said
as she walked next to me looking afar at ‘the spring
that suddenly came in the winter near the closed sea.
How unexpectedly. Many years passed by. How are we going to die?’
A mourning march saunter around the light drizzle.
How does a man die? Strange that none has thought of it.
And to those who thought of it, it was like a memory from old chronicles
from the era of the Crusades or the naval battle of Salamis.
And yet death is something that occurs; how does a man die?
And yet each earns his own death, his own death,
that doesn’t belong to anybody else
and this game is life.
The light faded in the cloudy day, no one decided anything.
The next dawn we were left with nothing;
everything surrendered even our hands
and our women slaves at the springheads and our children
at the quarries.
My friend, as she walked by my side, sang a song totally disjointed
‘In the spring, in the summer, slaves…’
One could recall old teachers who left us orphans.
A couple went by, talking
‘I’m tired of the dusk, let us go home
let us go home and turn on our light.’
Manolis Aligizakis 