V

We didn’t know them

          deep inside it was hope that said

we had met them in early childhood.

Perhaps we had seen them twice and then they went to the ships

cargoes of coal, cargoes of crops and our friends

vanished beyond the ocean forever.

Daybreak finds us beside the tired lamp

drawing on paper, awkwardly, painfully

ships, mermaids or conches;

at dusk we go down the river

because it shows us the way to the sea

and we spend our nights in cellars smelling of tar.

Our friends have left us

perhaps we never saw them, perhaps

we encountered them when sleep

still brought us very close to the breathing wave

perhaps we search for them because we search for the other life,

beyond the statues.

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DANGEROUS THINGS

Said Myrtias (a Syrian student

in Alexandria, during the reign

of Augustus Constans and Augustus Constantios,

partly pagan, partly Christian);

“Strengthened by theory and by study

I shall not fear my passions like a coward.

I shall give my body to carnal delights,

to the pleasures we dream about,

to the most daring erotic desires,

to the lascivious urges of my blood, without

any fear, because, whenever I choose,

and have the will, strengthened

as I shall be by theory and by study—

at the critical moment I shall find

my spirit, as it was before, ascetic.”

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Έλλη Αλεξίου – Για τον έρωτα