Gesture
This again is something you like unexpectedly
something insignificant like the gesture of the woman
who picks the dry flowers off the vase arrangement –
she doesn’t throw them away she stays thinks
a hovering gesture regretted from the start –
if you talk to her she won’t listen – a gesture
completely deaf like the word you place in a poem
then you turn and ask “did you say something?”
And you don’t care that war was declared
that the big airplanes shred the dusk
with two-edged black shadows amid the red
Manolis Aligizakis 