Gunshots

Since that night when I shot him and buried him in the old

marble masonry he hasn’t come back; those days I lived

with a whore on just a few drachmas a day and the angel

of loss was singing in the laundry;

it was a neighborhood of criminals; the ancient regret would

wake up each night and every morning we found a man hanged

in the storage room; behind the curtain they had hidden the ascetic

who was burning of his self-denial and the old bitch placed

the cauldron on his lap and cooked for the killers;

“I gave it all to you”, she said showing her hand hanging

from a nail on the wall, “what you have to give?”

Then gunshots were heard from an old lost revolt, a limping

dog followed me and the haunted man stopped, took off his

coat and covered the head of Saint John the Baptist since

winter was fast approaching;

My God I thought perhaps I didn’t bury him deep enough and

all this time he gives me up; during the night I went to the

deserted marble masonry and found him: he was kneeling and

crying he was gathering a bit of soil with which he covered

my cold life.