The Favour of Alexander Valas
Ah, I am not upset that a wheel of my chariot
is broken, and that I lost this silly race.
With good wines and amid beautiful roses
I’ll spend the night. Antioch is mine.
I am the most glorified young man.
I am Valas’s weakness, his adorable one.
Tomorrow, you will see, they will say that the race was unfair.
(But if I were inelegant and if I had secretly ordered it,
the flatterers would have declared me winner,
along with my crippled chariot.)
Manolis Aligizakis 