Opposite the Sky
for Yannis Ritsos
I
From stone to stone, from root to root,
from lamp to lamp the night,
as if made of foggy glass, leads
to the other sprouting, which now resembles
coal under our bodies, up to the crowded,
inverted wells of the stars,
that pull up and down the buckets
of their distant fire.
One word, another one, a gesture,
a thousand mouths, in every position,
in each movement the girly laughter
which you had foreseen,
deep silence of a violin, the circle
that closes like an extending chain
and the open veins of time
without beginning nor end.
Four faces grope the sky.
Vegas, the charging eagle
Altair, the rising eagle
over the narrow valleys we first started
Cassiopeia, the beautiful Cassiopeia
opposite the spite of Athena, opposite
the spite of the sand that covered her.
Alone, you remember?
And the scared Andromeda by the shore
having no news from Perseus,
yet hoping.
The roads of the stars, roads of the people
ploughed plains of the universe
crossroads in slanting fashion
those endless millions of light years…
Then, what?
Libros Libertad 