Lampposts IV
Every so often Peter would disappear for one or
two weeks; then he’d return as innocent as ever.
I had loved the key keeper, Nikias said,
since he was alone in the night with his lamp
with the train whistles over the muddy fields
over country cemeteries with nettles and rotten
planks.
A grasshopper was on the table; it looked, with
unadapted eyes, the yellow midget who stood under
the chandelier flipping
an old worn out passport. Soon after, a bit loud
and somewhat sad voices were heard from the street;
the textile workers were passing with threads on
their hair. The other three,
silent, humble, were following a little far away.
The handsome boy
with the long hair and freckles walked up to
the dirt plateau; the wind was clearly heard although
it wasn’t blowing at all. A whistle by the old ancient
shepherd was settling in the dark noon water-wells.
We met Alex that same evening; he looked like
the tired ticket collector of an empty bus at midnight;
the used tickets weren’t stirring around although
the wind was blowing;
the tickets were motionless in the air or on his cloths
and hair,
perhaps inside of him too, motionless, wrinkled,
ravaged as if amid the fingers of sad blind men,
like lottery tickets that hadn’t won.
I’m better off, Phaedon said, without any ticket
new or old; I have death on my side; I walk up
the stairway; I don’t hold any candle; under
the stairs we have the storage room with the toys
of children and of the exiled: wooden horses
with wheels, one eyed dolls, carriages,
the overcoat of the great blind man, most blind
than all; I’m talking of the one who blinded himself
taking revenge for an unknown mistake; sometimes
a bunch of cockroaches, ants, mice, bedbugs come
out of that hole; However, I’m, as I said,
on the stairway. My beard feels itchy. I open the big
balcony glass door, take some deep breaths;
Mrs. Katina is on the opposite balcony with curlers
on her hair.
We greet each other without any enmity while
we both watch with interest the oaring competition,
the handsome rowers in their white bathing suits
in a sea made of light-blue milk.
Libros Libertad 