SKETCHES FOR A SUMMER
A Word For Summer
We’ve returned to autumn again, the summer
like an exercise book that we are tired of writing in remains
filled with deletions, abstract designs
and question marks in the margin, we’ve returned
to the season of eyes staring
into the mirror under the electric light
tightened lips and the people strangers
in the rooms the streets under the pepper trees
while headlights of cars massacre
thousands of pale masks.
We’ve returned; we always start out to return
to loneliness, a fistful of soil, to the empty hands.
And yet once I fell in love with Syngrou Avenue
the double up and down of the great road
leading us as though miraculously to the sea
the eternal sea to cleanse us of our sins
once I fell in love with some unknown people
that I suddenly met at the end of the day
talking to themselves like captains of a sunken armada
evidence that the world is immense.
And yet I loved these roads here, these columns
even though I was born on the other shore near
reeds and rushes, islands
that had water springing out of the sand to quench
the thirst of the rower, even though I was born near
the sea that I fold and unfold with my fingers
when I’m tired—I no longer know where I was born.
Manolis Aligizakis 