THE LIFT OPERATOR
However, he wants to talk, to finish what he left
half-done.
He listens to the talks around him and inside him
he wants to connect them.
If we could change, he said, (who said it?
To whom?) to change, in other words, to exchange
Give me, he said, your beautiful face, your youth
that I’ll be inside it, wearing your beautiful body,
in a union, my god, from within, melting in a union,
melting from the warmth of the union,
from the warmth of the spring, melting to the end.
And he was marked, since his birth, with a cross
on his forehead; marked by fate or his knowledge.
However, you move in your time and I in mine, and
it’s no one’s fault.
He said that and stopped talking. Who was he? You
couldn’t tell. People had lost their authentic blood,
not being able to discern their voice and their face
after so many chance encounters, tolerances,
Manolis Aligizakis 