II
When our cigarettes get close to each other
in the night and from their glowing ends
you can discern two people
who meet and separate the same way
from one prison to another
from one exile camp to another
from one tent to another.
Like cicadas when they can’t find trees
they climb on telegraph poles
we too spread roots wherever we can
counting time in weeks, months, seasons.
Now we all have little wooden boats
which we place next to the books
and we send to our relatives
we have plates and water glasses —
we have nothing, they stole everything
from us, we’re left with mud in the mouth.
We’re dressed with a soft skin
that rips easily.
‘You should had seen Voula after the Liberation,
now she’s worn out, work, childbirths,
problems with the police”
‘George was preparing his papers to immigrate to the US
when they killed him in Chalkida
just before the referendum.’
‘Dinos had it good, I mean, he left everything
and now he’s very successful in Canada.’
‘The floor was giving way under the chest
and she struggled to level it.
Leave it alone, I said to her, you waste
your time. Then one Sunday morning
the statuette fell and broke.’
‘Smoke from the fertilisers plant
hanged over the neighborhood,
it choked you day and night,
the cough wouldn’t abate with all the chemicals.’
And here we remain idle, we fight to survive
we sign petitions for peace, mail our complaints
we maintain a front line.
Yet we don’t live the years, we just count them,
we push them away to make sure they go by.
Manolis Aligizakis 