Expectation
What are they waiting for in the morning, with the vertical,
snow-white, square, big planes, fully lit again this spring?
What does the child wait for by the window with his slaughtered
doll? Or the old man leaning on his walking stick in front of
the glass balcony door, above the noise, the city, the garbage
collector, the banks, the flower shop? That unrepentant
old man who enlarges, in the space, the hand of the woman
who spreads her laundry on the opposite terrace, which enlarges
the wet, red and white striped bed sheet so it covers two-thirds
of the city, thus trying to forget that passkey of the burglar, not
the passkey at all, the second key they presented to him
in front of the other, one for each, there by his door that still
smelled oil paint, and he didn’t consider complaining or
to ask.
In his pocket, he held tightly the bag with the nails, considering
The pictures he had to hang in the big empty house.
Manolis Aligizakis 