Close your Eyes: All Your Old Life Will Parade in front of you
For Memas Messinis
When I was passing, unsuspectedly on a gondola, someone called me.
“Hey Hellene, hey Hellene…”
He was standing behind the iron Gate of the grassy courtyard of Saint George of the Hellenes, next to the canal.
“Hello to you too,” I said, “what brings you here?”
“I’m dead,” he says.
“Well,” I said, “blessed man, you a Hellene why did you die here? Why didn’t you go to die there, in our soft, homeland soil?”
“I would love it” he answered. Besides, one night, Natalia from the Laggon, told me so, you remember her, the girl with the golden breasts. She took me aside and said: “take me away from here, I can’t live with the bastards, You, see, her mother was from Smyrna. However, the other one, the blonde and beautiful harlot kept me here, the one who worked at the pigsty of Fretseria. She would passionately sing up to the evening, the song “Even if you are far away” that sweetened my lips and broke my heart.
Manolis Aligizakis 