Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume VI

Disfigurements
The modest, the simple, the right to bread, the bed that
was made of planks, a humble window without a feather
a few books next to it. A lightness blown straight from
the afternoon sky. Here, only here, the minimal, the
basics of the internal view, the alarm clock, the saw,
the shelf,
with the green bottles, and the naked arm on the chest.
We, of course, had our secret dead men and other
distances, long, short, with shops lit, between 7 and 10
o’clock, by old oil lamps, where the naïve daughter, half
dressed, for the first time discerns, in the old mirror,
her right leg enlarged up to the opposite hill and the cart
with the long crests that passed and missed her.

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Twelve Narratives of the Gypsy

Today you won’t awake
one who’s in deep sleep
today you won’t only bring
a new dawn to the world
but you’ll accomplish
something amazing: all
the immortals who have
died, those I buried myself
the immortals who have died
you’ll bring to life with your
music of resurrection.
For this you have brought me
to the cemetery, here to wait
and for this all things around
here are joyous and bloomed
and rejoicing, which I’ve never
seen before around the graves
nor have I seen cypresses
so flexible like now, like
bodies that wish to embrace
and kiss like newlyweds.
And the graves are but tables
waiting to be set with flavourful
foods for crowned revellers
who’ll come and feast until
the new rosy dawn comes.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3LP7NW6

Orange

Past
Looking back
I wonder why
everything I left without
any effort to change them
remained as beautiful
as nature had crafted them.
Who was I, after all
who once wished to shift
the balance of the universe
by changing the depth
of the beautiful cove
of a woman’s body
and the length of a man’s penis
without the Grand Master’s plan?

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763750

Constantine Cavafy

In Alexandria (31 B.C.)
From his small town, close to the suburbs
and still full of dust from the trip
the travelling salesman arrives. And “Frankincense” and “Gum!”
“The Finest Olive Oil!” “Fragrance for your Hair!”
He cries out on the streets. But the big noise of people,
and the music and the parades won’t let him be heard.
The crowd pushes him, pulls him along, hits him.
And when finally, totally dazed, he asks, what madness is this?
Someone throws at him the gigantic lie
of the palace, that Anthony triumphs in Greece.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562856

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763823