Stratis Thalasinos Among the Agapanthi
There are no asphodels, nor violets, nor hyacinths
how can you talk with the dead?
The dead only know the language of the flowers;
for this they keep silent
they travel and keep silent, endure and keep silent
beyond the land of dreams, beyond the land of dreams.
If I start to sing I’ll call out
and if I call out—the agapanthi order silence
lifting the tiny hand of a purple Arabian baby
or even the footprints of a goose in the air.
It is unbearable and difficult, the alive are not enough for me
first because they don’t speak and then
because I have to ask the dead
in order to carry on further.
There is no other way, soon as I fall asleep
the comrades sever the silver strings
and the wings’ flask empties.
I fill it and it empties, I fill it and it empties;
I wake like a goldfish swimming
in the chasms of lightning,
and the wind and the deluge and the human bodies,
and the agapanthi nailed like the arrows of fate
to the unquenchable earth
shaken up by convulsive signals,
as though loaded on an ancient cart
rolling down gutted roads, on old cobble-stones,
the agapanthi, asphodels of the negroes:
How can I learn this religion?
The first thing God made is love
then comes the blood
and the thirst for blood stirred by
the body’s sperm like the salt.
The first thing God made is the long journey
that house is waiting
with a light-blue smoke
with an aged dog
waiting to die with the home coming.
But the dead have to advise me;
it’s the agapanthi that keep them silent
like the depths of the sea or the water in the glass.
And the comrades remain in the palace of Circe;
my precious Elpinor! My precious, fool Elpinor!
Or, don’t you see them?—Oh Help us!
On the blackened ridge of Psara.
Libros Libertad 