III
Oh dark shivering in the root and on the leaves!
Appear sleepless stature in the crowded silence
raise your head from your cupped hands
let your wish be done and tell me again
the words that touched and mixed in a bosom’s blood
and let your desire bend like a deep walnut shade
and let your hair’s grace flood us
from the down of the kiss to the leaves of the heart.
You lowered your eyes and you had the smile
that master painters of bygone days humbly painted
Forgotten reading from an ancient gospel
your words breathed and your soft voice:
“The passing of time is gentle and unworldly
and pain rows softly in my soul
down incising the sky, dream remains unsinkable
and it is as though fragrant shrubs pass by.
With the eye’s startling, with the body’s blushing
flocks of doves awaken and descend
their low circular fluttering encompasses me
the stars a human touch on my breast.
The distant and indescribable lament of the world
I hear as in a conch mixed by the adversary’s buzz
only for moments that vanish and the thought
of my two pronged desire reigns alone.
As though I had risen naked in a captured recollection
when you came familiar and foreign, my precious
to grant me bowing the endless deliverance
that I seek from the wind’s swift sistrum…”
The broken sundown faded and vanished
as it seemed a fallacy to ask for the gifts of heaven.
Your eyes were lowered. The moon’s thorn
sprouted and you feared the mountain shadows.
…How our love diminishes in the mirror
dreams in our sleep, school of forgetfulness
in the depths of time, how our hearts turn narrow
and vanish in the rocking of a foreign embrace…
Manolis Aligizakis 