Thrush
‘Ephemeral sperm of a vicious demon and bad luck
why do you push me to speak what you are better off not knowing.’
- SILENUS TO MIDAS
A
House Near the Sea
The houses I had they took from me. It happened
that the times were unpropitious: war, destruction, exile
sometimes the hunter meets the migratory birds
sometimes he doesn’t. Hunting
was good in my time, lots of people felt the shot
the others roam around or go mad in the shelters.
Don’t talk to me about the nightingale, nor the skylark
nor about the little wagtail
inscribing numbers with its tail in the light;
I don’t know many things about houses
I know they have their own race, nothing more.
New at first, like babies
playing in the orchards with the tassels of the sun,
they embroider the colored window shutters
and the shining doors over the day;
when the architect finishes they change,
they shrink or smile or even become resentful
with those who stayed behind, with those who went away
with others who would return if they could
or those who vanished now that the world
has turned into an immense hotel.
I don’t know many things about houses,
I remember their joy and their sorrow
sometimes, when I stop even when
sometimes, near the sea, in empty rooms
with an iron bed with nothing of my own
looking at the evening spider, I contemplate
that someone is getting ready to come that they dress him up
in white and black cloths with plenty of colorful jewels
and around him venerable ladies with gray hair
and dark lace shawls talk softly
that he gets ready to come and say goodbye to me;
or a woman with quivering eyelashes and slim waist
returning from southern ports,
Smyrna, Rhodes, Syracuse, Alexandria,
from cities closed like warm window shutters
with perfume made of gold fruits and herbs
that she climbs the stairs without seeing
those who slept under the stairs.
Houses, you know, grow easily resentful, when you empty them.
Manolis Aligizakis 