A Dog in the Night
During a strange, orange and rosy dusk, it stopped in front
of the locked house; a joyous group of people got off
a car in front of the fence-wall.
The eyes of the blonde young man looked like the eyes
of his Lord.
It stopped.
The young men looked at it.
It wagged its tail. It stopped.
The young girls pet it.
It guessed. It stopped.
They tied its tails on a bucket. It stopped.
Then it run away hearing behind it the sound of the bucket
dragging on the cobblestones
not at all an angry dog, not sad
with that happiness of punishment for its first betrayal.
That clangour, in all its truthfulness, would inform its master
and perhaps it would find him one day. It was its choice.
Manolis Aligizakis 