THE GIFT OF SLEEP
All of a sudden my proud silence is teased
by the thought
that ants never sleep
and their sad and Sisyphean wakeup call
could follow me even in my slumber,
and then I withdraw into
the perfume of a box from the Palais Garnier,
into the smooth flight between napping and music,
or into the coolness from the Bedouins’ pillows
and the non-shadows from a high boat,
among the fjords heated and extinguished for centuries
by the sun protected in silky whiteness,
beyond all the pains and beyond
the final repentance,
in an Edemic garden
where the fertility of wilderness is now lying,
and keeps reminding the Inuit
how non unique his soul is
and how I have always dreamt of him in the destiny
projected against the waves of the huge crowd in Mecca,
Oh God, all these are getting petrified
in Veronica’s veil, a little statue
from a Bosnian village often swept
by the Virgin’s hem.
Manolis Aligizakis 