A DOG IN THE NIGHT (excerpt)
And that house, which I described to you, was very dark; it
didn’t delay the road traffic at all, nor the soft songs
heard from the boats,
or the lights that were turned on slowly at the shore-line.
The reflection of the sea lighted the facades of the houses.
The two shadows of couples in love remained among
the dusty road oleanders. No one listened to the hollow
echo from the wing of the bat on the railings in the backyard
like an ashy palm that hit a motionless face. What would it help
if we reverse things, words, events and even ourselves, wearing
a sweaty shirt that we put on in front of the window, immovable
there, in the current — waiting and not waiting.
That day passed noisily in that seashore city.
Soon after the moon shone, wide, despotic, dominant,
and enforced a silvery silence in the marketplace, in the
quarrels, the lies,
on the store shutters, the glass windows of the jewelers,
and the suburb roofs where the birds had already
roosted.
A faint glare easily established the meaning of a dusty
bottle on the old self.
Manolis Aligizakis 