IV
It can’t accept death, it can’t accept death,
it can’t accept it; but you aren’t just a cell
that doesn’t know when you die
you aren’t a deer that only
shivers and keeps silent — you know it
and you choose it, and you don’t want it,
you don’t want it.
Yet Death arrives
through tiredness and love, through the wooden
plough of lost time, the withered paper bills of words,
through the legs of the chair that stand still
in the craters of poverty, through the man in
his raincoat, the shoeless wheat ears of rain,
through the sun’s holes, the stone and the bar of soap
from the steps that follow your steps
Death arrives
like the hand which brings the bread, the trains
that come through the curtains of midnight.
Death arrives — George, George.
A sea of blood covers us in the night.
George, a sea of blood on our faces,
in our mouths, in our nostrils.
George, do you hear me?
We who one hour ago didn’t know each other;
bring your faces closer,
light up, light up your faces, bring the fire,
bring your voices.
Do you hear me? Do you all hear me?
Death doesn’t drown us
doesn’t exhausts us —
march on, march on, do you all hear me?
No, I’m not that wireless radio that
brings back silence, I only
spit my last night coal
so long as we make it,
so long as we make it.
Speak, speak.
I’m okay; I’m saying to you, I’m okay.
We are next to each other.
Bring your hands, bring the fire.
Life can’t accept death, it can’t.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 