ORESTES
Under the moonlight the houses get lower down
at the plain, the corn creaks from the wind or the need
to grow bigger, the whitewashed bases of trees gleam
like mowed columns in a noiseless war, while the signs
of the small shops hang like verified oracles on closed
doors. Farmers must have slept with their arms over
their bellies and sleeping birds with their light feet
clasping onto the tree branches not trying to hold onto
something, as if trying is nothing, as if nothing happened,
as if nothing is about to happen — weightless, weightless
as if the sky has spread amid their feathers, as if someone
is passing the long and narrow hallway with an oil lamp
in his hand and all the windows are open and, out in the
countryside, you hear the animals ruminate calmly as if
they exist in the eternal.
I like this damp quietness. Somewhere close by, in a humble
house, a young woman is combing her long hair, and next
to her, her spread undies are breathing in the moonlight; all
of them flowing, slippery, happy. In the baths, water is poured
out of big urns onto the necks and breasts of young girls, the
small aromatic bars of soap slide onto the tiles; bubbles split
the sound of water and laughter; a woman slipped and fell;
everything slips because of the soap — you can’t hold
the bubbles nor can you get a hold of yourself — this slippage
is the reoccurring rhythm of life — women laugh and blow
the white, weightless, tiny towers of soap-bubbles from
the little forest of their mound. Isn’t this happiness?
Manolis Aligizakis 