The Sentence to Oblivion
Who would estimate for us the sentence to oblivion?
Stop, passer-by, before the still lake;
the curly sea and the tormented ships
the roads that surrounded mountains and birthed stars
everything ends on this immense surface.
Now you may watch the swans calmly
look at them, they are white like a night’s sleep
without touching anywhere, they slide on a thin blade
that raises them slightly over the water.
They are like you, stranger, the still wings and you understand them
while the stone eyes of lions look at you
and the tree’s leaf remains uninscribed in the sky
and the slate pencil pierced the prison wall.
And yet the birds that slaughtered the village girls weren’t
other than them
the blood turned the milk red on the street’s flagstones
and their horses noiselessly drew in the troughs
illegible shapes like molten lead.
Manolis Aligizakis 