PERSEPHONE (excerpt)
Sometimes
when I walk in the garden absentmindedly under
the poplars or when I clean a shirt in the stony basin
or I let my hand rest on my chest or I hold a flower
with my own girly tenderness I suddenly feel naked,
pinned on the wall or on the trunk of a tree or
in the metal entrance mirror, especially there,
in the mirror, double pinned, double seen, without
refuge, without any leaf, in a concentrated lucidity,
lighted from outside and from inside by two spotlights
of his breath which dash out of its narrow meaningful
nostrils, its oracular, sensual, religious nostrils.
Send it away, send it away
I yelled at him, fixated there, angry with a vague
guilt or innocence, I had nothing to hide, free
in my indisposition.
Only my hair flowed everywhere, getting in and
out of its nostrils like restless roots that shone
around me like wings and waves. I saw them.
They gave me back a different pride, my pride,
an independence opposite the dog and its master.
Manolis Aligizakis 