GUARDING EVENING STAR
AFTER THE RAIN
The rain stopped. All the rain became a small round
drop
like the warm ring in your finger with its light-blue stone.
There is always a sad story in the periphery
of the ring
like a young girl who’s crying locked behind the autumnal
fence-wall.
Do you like to go for a short walk, a little further away
from the neighbourhood, there, where the skeleton
of the airplane is rusting?
They are all good — the washed roads, the washed roofs
of the houses, the window shutters
as if they have been painted and the light bulb
under the door of the milkman’s store is washed too
like a soap-bubble blown by the joyous mouth of a child.
When we were children
we played with the soap bubbles all morning long and
Anette used to say: “why you waste the soap?
Do you remember Anette with the black headscarf?”
She always had almonds and walnuts in the pockets
of her apron — she always treated us and she had an old coin
of silence with two ancient heads engraved on it — back then
when the coal vendor passed by the neighbourhood
with his cart, he looked like a runner who shone on top
of his chariot in the fire of the dusk;
back then when even the shortest song in the gramophone,
on Saturday night,
was lasting for a long time in the night, so much so
that we didn’t want to fall asleep so that we wouldn’t
miss the rest of it, like a lady with her very long white
dress that entered through an engraved door
and the lacy tail of her dress was slow passing through
the door while the lady was already gone.
We used to fall asleep in this way. And the fragrance
of the damp roses
remained on the bed-sheet. And a whole army of stars
was walking on the wooden floor planks as if the tin
soldiers were re-energized.
The evening star, up front, was holding the flag.
We didn’t know yet the meaning of war.
There was a glass orchard outside our window
the house smelled of morning coffee and jasmine, the sun
was coming in from the kitchen.
Mother was hanging the copper coffee pots and it was
as if she cut lights from a river and tied them in small
bouquets.
There was that young shepherd who was whistling over
that light-blue hill.
That was the signal; we knew it. We wouldn’t drink our milk
that was getting cold on the table
next to the small napkins embroidered with the young donkeys
and the large yellow daisies
and the silver tray resembled the cool morning moon,
somewhat sleepy —
for this, mother had gone to the garden, with her hair
loosened,
to get the moon that had fallen among the roses — and her
hair was filled with pearls
drink your milk she would say. Didn’t mother hear
the whistle?
The young shepherd boy was waiting for us there, to
teach us how to play the flute.
And whatever we touched after that — a cup, a book,
the back of a chair
was as if we were trying our fingers on the flute.
Shall we go for a short walk around the neighbourhood
then?
Perhaps we’ll find some wild flowers that have poked
through schisms amid the rocks.
The whole of Athens is visible down there — the trolleys
go around like big ants — a man who pushes his cart is
like an ant that pushes a grain of wheat —
the silence of sundown and its reflection on the windows
of the cars
as if they adorn the rough forest with sparkles. You can smell
emigration and wild celery.
The gypsies must have lifted their tents on their shoulders
they must have wrapped the distances and their songs
in their huge square kerchiefs made of canvas.
Only a knot remains on top of the clouds and in our throats
like the knot the gypsies used to tie their bundled cloths.
They took their bundles on their shoulders and vanished in
the steam of dusk
like the army Red Cross regiment in the forest.
Now the last two birds drink rain water from the half
part of the broken violin.
The barefoot angels are cold. Everything passes.
You hear the train’s whistle as if coming from the underworld.
Athens after the rain.
No, I say to you. I don’t want. They killed them over there.
They were young.
They hadn’t finished their first song. How bitter is the evening.
The evening star is red against the grey sky
of the neighbourhood
like the bloodied hole in the shirt of the killed man.
Strange, really, how fast children grow these days;
when you say I’m hungry and they tell you there’s
no bread— you grow twenty years between these
two words.
Their voices are heard coming from the playground
with the dried up shrubs:
adult voices, strong, like the pain in the stomach
like the train loaded with ammunition and going
through a tunnel.
Sometimes their ball is seen over the red, washed roofs
of the houses
sketching a curve as if designing a bridge that connects
the two edges of the city — passing over that bridge
you could reach the sky. Lightning hides behind
the hills, a proclamation in the pockets of the children.
And the evening star is their ball. How high it has reached.
Libros Libertad 