The Models
Let us never forget, he said, the good lessons we learned
from the Arts of the Hellenes. The Heavenly always next to
the everyday, next to man, to the animal to the thing —
a bracelet on the wrist of the naked goddess; a flower
fallen on the floor. Remember the beautiful presentations
on our clay urns — gods with birds and animals,
the lyre with them too, a hammer, an apple, the box, the pliers;
ah, and that poem where the god, after finishing his work,
takes his bellows from the fire, gathers his tools one by one
and places them in the silver chest, then, with a sponge, he wipes
his face, his hands, his nervous neck, his hairy chest. Thus,
clean, he goes out in the evening, as he does regularly, leaning
on the shoulders of golden ephebes — the works of his hands
which have strength and thought and voice — goes out to
the street, most majestic of all, the limping god, the worker
Manolis Aligizakis 