eleven
The Black Myth
and the White
of generations
and races
became history
Hysteria became Myth
half of them forgot their origin
the rest of their destination
Ugga
Day: February 8, 2026
Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume III
21st of November
Another Sunday. Headache.
Too many cigarettes. Smoke. The windows
don’t open.
I don’t have but a week of rain and shells of cracked
almonds.
The faint light through the window; six pieces of ice.
The wick of the lamp, I don’t know, looks like inverted
silence. I count the squares of the blanket. All day long
I think that a basket of bread is nothing but a basket
of bread. I contemplate on this though I can’t believe it
because, why the buttons of our shirts get loose and
when the nights walk out in the roads, how do we find
the nails of the stars in the holes of the washrooms
every morning?
Troglodytes
III
Shadows of the living dead
calligraphically dangling
from the turrets of the castle
tortured aspirations hanging
from the insignia of palaces
groans hymned by untamed heroes
in the sunless dungeons into
which the brave becomes braver
and the weak become weaker.
Choir and its antiphony, two opposing
rivulets yet both trickling to the same river
merge into the most accepting ocean.
Kneel and forever fear me,
the day’s command laments
kneel and forever fear me,
the greediest ghetto decrees
kneel and forever fear me,
the ancient symbol commands
kneel and forever fear me,
decrees the greediest headmaster
with his golden tiara and
the gleaming chasuble.
Tasos Livaditis – Selected Poems
Perverted Passion
Someday I’ll remember something so nice; it’ll be
autumn in that narrow side street with the glass shops, where
father sold dream books after he went bankrupt — since then
I never got out of the dream, although I was cold; at least I could
fall back onto my perverted passion: melancholy or crowding.
Because, let’s be honest, I never loved anybody and this tender
glance of mine was just for personal use
like the immortality of the poets.
Manolis Aligizakis 