ORESTES (excerpt)
She retains her anger in the intensity of her voice —
(if she would lose that voice what of her would had
remained?) I believe she’s afraid of the fulfillment of
punishment, as if she wouldn’t have anything left. She
has never heard the secret rustle of brushwood when a
lissome animal passes just out of the windows, during
the supper; she has never seen the rope-ladder, left, for
no apparent reason, on the high, bare wall on a holiday;
she never paid attention to that, for no apparent reason;
she has never paid attention to the hairy top of corn
scratching the sole of the smallest cloud, or the shape
of a water pitcher under the starry sky, or a sickle
left by itself next to the spring, at noon, or the shadow
of the loom in the closed room, when they sprinkle
sulfur on the grapevine plants and the voices of farmers
are heard in the plain, while a sparrow, all alone in the
world, eating the little flies, seeds, some crumbs in
the yard, tries to spell its freedom. She has seen
nothing.
Manolis Aligizakis 