Simple Words
Evening is almost the same as all others: tediousness,
the faint light, lost paths
and suddenly someone says to you, “I’m poor”, as though
giving you a great promise.
Tasos Livaditis – Selected Poems
Day: January 29, 2026
Constantine Cavafy
Passage
Those things he shyly imagined as a student are open,
revealed to him now. And he goes around,
he stays up all night and is led astray.
And as it is (for our art) right,
his new, hot blood is enjoyed by lust.
His body is won over
by devious, erotic drunkenness; his young
limbs give in to it.
Thus, a simple young man
becomes the subject of our attention, and for a moment,
he passes through the High World of Poetry
the sensitive young man with his fresh, hot blood.
Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume IV
I have my life that I want to live. Not revenge — what
another death could erase from the previous death, when
in fact it’s a violent death? What can it add to life? Time
has passed, I don’t hate anymore; have I forgotten? I
don’t know. Indeed I feel certain sympathy for
the murderess: she has passed over great crevices, wisdom
has dilated her eyes and she can see in darkness, she can
see the imperishable, the unachievable, the irreversible.
She sees me.
I too want to see father’s murder under the soothing
generality of death, to forget of him in the wholeness
of death that awaits us too. This night has taught me
the innocence of all the usurpers. We’re all usurpers
of something — of the people, the throne, of Eros or
even of death. My sister the usurper of my only life
and I of yours.
Antony Fostieris – Selected Poems
Path to the Obvious
A piece of chalk slowly writes something on the blackboard
from dusk to the next dawn
the same sentence; unfortunately
twenty years in school and still uneducated,
who can read the world book syllable by syllable
image after image
aromatic sounds
lighted inscriptions in the contour of darkness
dark inscriptions on the placenta of light
fate has provided us with bad teachers
with compasses, rulers, protractors
and oh men of Athens, you know
the path to the obvious
is spread by the eyeglasses of logic. You know
what happens to the uneducated,
shoeless man.
Manolis Aligizakis 