Persephone
Perhaps for this reason we finally chose the shadow.
Darkness is black, glossy black, unaltered, without
shades; you’re saved from the effort to choose, for
what reason anyway?
That servant
was black as if made of darkness. You remember?
When he grabbed me we were gathering flowers
in the big plain. The baskets were full of crocuses,
violets, lilies, roses, hyacinths, amaranth. I had stooped
over a most beautiful flower, looked like narcissus,
a narcissus I saw for the first time, with a hundred colours,
a hundred stems over which dewdrops sparkled. And I,
there amazed, leaning over, as if folded in two,
as if leaning over a water well, was looking at my face,
almost self-content, in love with the rosy shadow on
the edge of my lips and with the crisp, ivory contour
between my breasts.
Manolis Aligizakis 