The Initiate
The initiate dressed in white always dwells in caves
and the oleanders behind him will turn red
the pebbles will be sprinkled with holy rain
and the whole gorge that follows.
I also go near with my serpent-self
the estuary of passion.
my soles, the last lovers,
carry me lightly
as if I had no heaviness in my consciousness.
The one who attracts me stops, thin,
dressed in white and having a ponytail;
he smells a strong odor like devil rosemary
while he exhumes the beautiful fragrance of a dead angel.
The leafage of the carob-tree
hides something quivering and invisible
felt only by that quivering and invisible sense
that we have inside us.
The initiate is very thin;
his pants only balloon a little
in the front and a little in the back
while airy flesh fills his shirt.
The sponsor of earth lowered me,
with the unanswered questions in my tongue,
to a cave that instead of a mouth
had a hole in the sky.
Under it stood
the provider of the inconceivable
who milked the light-blue
with his palms turned upwards.
He stirred a little;
was perhaps the unforeseen from above
that pushed him
or the earth, slave of precision
that shook him from his foundations?
Manolis Aligizakis 