Philoctetes (excerpt)

Such great was the shadow of father; it darkened the whole

house; it shut the doors and the windows from top to bottom

and sometimes I felt as if I had to pass my head under father’s

legs to be able to see the light; that scared me the most:

the sensation of his thighs on my neck; I preferred

to stay inside in the innocent dim light of the rooms

with the docile furniture, with the loyal touch

of the curtains and other times in the deserted hall

of the statues — I loved the kouroi.

Freshness and silence reigned in there while outside

in the olive groves and the grapevines the cicadas

sang during the conflagrated golden noon.

The calm shadows of the statues were crisscrossing

each other creating diaphanous, light-blue rhombus

on the floor and sometimes, a small mouse, daring

in the quietness, would pass stepping on the feet

of the kouroi; it’d stop, observe with its two oil-drop eyes,

full of suspicion, the narrow-long windows, fixating

its pointing snout, like a soft arrow, to the immenseness,

on behalf of all the stone-dead — as if it was

their young partner.

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