Old Song
The garden railings are wet from the rain, like the poor who
are left outside
but as night falls, a flute or a star speaks for the whole
universe.
When we were children, we hid under the stairway and when
we came out, we had left behind a royal fate.
Silence makes the world bigger, sorrow more just
and later, as young men, we hugged the first tree and
narrated our past to it,
joyless days that you’ve passed; you’ve left behind an emotional
memory
and I, who was crazy for the future, now in agony, I observe
the movement of the clock’s fingers.
Until one night, a man goes along the road singing.
Where have you heard this song before? You don’t remember.
Yet nostalgia of all you dreamed shivers in that song. You
stand by the window
and listen as if enchanted. And suddenly the song stops
at the turn of the road. Everything vanishes. Quiet.
And what will you do now?
Manolis Aligizakis 