NEIGHBOURHOOD AFTERNOON
The train that passed an hour ago cut the rain in two.
A bit of smoke remains hanging onto the afternoon
like a dishevelled hair-piece of an actor, moist from
the dampness
hanging on the wall, perhaps, king Lear had worn it
that night with the tempest. When we travelled along
the deserted road, Alexis stayed behind collecting
wild vegetables and the pale dusk was shining on us
like the faded window shutter of the deserted house
in the wind. Someone passed by with a ladder
on his shoulders — no he wasn’t planning to climb up
and light the lamp of the moon — these things were
forgotten, far away, behind the mountains — like
a broken car left in the muddy road that serves
no other purpose though it obstructs the passing and
men with their carts curse it when their thin horses
stumble upon it.
It was cold. We rushed to return home.
Soon as we locked the door we heard the first shots
in the road.
Now you have to calculate what you took, what you gave.
There are lots of fallen leaves in the little forest.
The silence that would sing, as you claimed, resembles
the taxidermy crane on the dusty shelf of the school.
It won’t talk.
The parish priest died of hunger.
The lamppost supervisor was found dead face down in front
of his door.
He never got up again. The carts won’t ever carry fruits
again
they’re to carry the dead. The knife sharpener was found
with his head over his sharpening wheel last night,
like someone who looks down in the well and
the well is deep and black — you see nothing in it.
It’s very cold this year. It’ll snow.
When you tear off a page from the calendar it’s as if
you open a window during the night in a foreign
snowed up city.
You don’t recognize the place. How bitter is the table
without bread — like the sky in a foreign land without
sun — and these plates resemble the locked up
suburban houses when autumn comes, when
you see them through the windows of the train, over the hill
returning again to the city after your summer holidays
and these utensils resemble garden railings moistened
by long gone summers.
No — it’s nothing — I’m not hungry, you hear me?
It’s just a little headache. I rather go to lie down
to put the chin close to the knees — to go to sleep
listening to the wind that grinds its teeth outside.
These faces look so strange
the steps on the sidewalk so strange
and the pepper trees of the street also strange —
the children get frightened by them — and
they pull their hairs without saying any words.
They had tied the rope on the trees over there —
five men stayed there for three nights and three days
like riders of the galloping wind who never got away.
The light of the lamp doesn’t recognize our hands —
the glass is smoked up, you see;
our hands on the table resemble dried up plane-tree leaves
they can’t hold a harmonica, can’t say thank you
or the day after tomorrow;
only when they hold another hand
they become hands again — and then the circle created
by the light of the lamp resembles a dish with warm food
from which two or three or more men can eat
and feel content.
Look, the evening star is rising. A purple dusk
after the rain — the evening star is
like the first I love you of a different spring. Look.
Freshly washed fence walls — the letters are still visible.
Stay by the window for a while yet. Here. We’ll look far away.
Over there to the corner of the road where our old spring
resembles
a green kiosk with many colourful magazines hanging
on cloths-pins fluttering in the breeze as if they clap
joyously;
a kiosk with many packs of cigarettes
that the workers stop and buy after work,
a kiosk with small mirrors
where the neighbourhood girls stop and pretend
that they don’t look into while absentmindedly
look at the young worker who passes with his hands
in his pockets
and as the mirrors hang slanting in a way
it gives them the impression that the young worker
will fall on them —
as they absentmindedly fix the curls of their hair
that slides on their foreheads like the light slides
on the upper crack of the door that leads to
the next room where two lovers kiss.
Look, then, the evening star has risen.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 