ELYSIAN FIELDS

Bodies extremely tired

bent, cut in half

souls deserted them, walk alone

on the grass slowly, open books laid

the bodies lied down, crunched

distorted and they appear

at the far end holding roses and with

the dream and passion they go

dust to dust the bodies become

yet far in the horizon, like suns

the souls go down dressed in sky

or like simple smiles on lips

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An Old Man On the River Bank

                                  For Nani Panagiotopoulos

And yet we have to consider how to proceed.

To feel is not enough, nor to think, nor to move

nor to risk your body in the ancient embrasure,

when the boiling oil and molten lead groove the walls.

And yet we have to consider to what direction we go ahead

not the way our pain desires it and our hungry children

and the chasm of our comrades’ call from the opposite shore

not even the darkened light whispers it in the improvised hospital,

the pharmaceutical shine on the young man operated on at noon

but in some other way perhaps I mean to say that

the long river that emerges from the great lakes enclosed deep in Africa

and at sometime it was god and then it turned into road and benefactor and judge and delta that is never the same as the wise old people taught

and yet it always remains the same body,

the same bed and the same Point, the same orientation.

I don’t want anything else but to speak simply, let this grace be granted to me.

Because even our song we’ve loaded with so much music that it slowly sinks

and our art we’ve decorated so much that its features are eaten by the gold

and it is time that we say our few words because tomorrow our soul sails away.

If pain is human, we are not human just to suffer pain

that’s why I contemplate so much these days about the great river

this image that goes forward between herbs and verdure

and beasts that graze and drink and people who sow and harvest

and even in great tombs and small plots of the dead.

This current that leads its way and that is not at all different from the blood of men

and from the eyes of men when they stare straight ahead without any fear in their hearts

without the everyday shiver about the little things or even the great ones

when they stare straight ahead like the wayfarer who is used to find his way guided by the stars

not like us, the other day, looking at the enclosed orchard of a sleepy Arabic house

behind the lattice, the fresh garden changed shape, growing larger and smaller

changing as we looked at it; we changed the shape of our desire and our hearts

at high noon, us the patient dough of a world that pushes us away and kneads us,

caught in the ornamented nets of life that was right

and then it turned into dust and sank in the sand

leaving behind it only that indecipherable dizzying sway of a tall palm tree.

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