GYPSIES
The gypsies live next to the cemetery,
with no horses, moulded
with this soil which they don’t desire.
Funeral processions pass by their tents
the trees point to the same sky
and the creek where they meet is a rubbish dump.
What happened to the guitars
the river, the horse rider?
Something flashes, two knives, two bodies
the cop whistles — no, it’s nothing.
The gypsies have regular ID papers these days.
They talk their language around
the heating bucket every evening:
how was the day, what they bought,
what they sold and the dead
in their graves don’t understand them.
The dead speak the language of the dead
they want someone to tell their future
no one understands them.
What happened to the guitars,
the river, the horse rider?
Each of us wants something
while we speak our own language.
Manolis Aligizakis 