There are no women or any children
only old grey-haired, middle-aged men
and lads and they slowly come
stooping and tired as if getting out
of hiding places inside the earth or
from some sunless dungeons.
They stop awhile and tremble
unfamiliar as they are
in the road and under such sun
with their hands over their eyes
and their hands on their foreheads
as if blinded by gleam and fear
and they walk away frightened
by the sunlight and the far-gleaming
sea, by the horizon’s edge and
the sky over and around them
as if in a daylight game.
They seem as if they are born to
stoop over hard-to-read
books and old synaxarions
and over something more precious
than the Arabic topaz and
pearls from Hormuz
Manolis Aligizakis 