Sad Craftiness
The chimney, the church, the road, the tavern: familiar.
In the dark room, a fish swims in the glass bowl.
He, always alone, observes it; he isn’t paying attention.
The invisible, moving gleam of the fish and that sensation
of the lack of emotion. At least, a tiny numbness
at the edge of his toes, the untried laziness to move,
to turn on the light, or to stay down there on the imaginary
wheelchair, from where he takes out his left arm,
groping on one metal wheel as if holding the steering
wheel of an ancient, faraway authority, tired and
indifferent that doesn’t to be enforced upon anyone.
Thus, it is as if you hold the poem like a sworn secret
not to show that it also has nothing to declare.
Manolis Aligizakis 