To be or not ?

Fostieris Andonis
2018

translated by David Connolly

To be or not?
So mused again my heart’s
Hamlet
And then:
How can you say the reverse
It’s heard in the eyes
Firm like a mire.

(How heartless
That habit kids have
Of turning a tortoise
Upside down
A beetle – poor creature
Shakes tiny legs of supplication
And feels shame
With all the secret signs
Of its generation in relief
In the light: little
Adam
Who lost
And to conceal the wound
Plucks fig leaves
He plucks the tree hoping for
The mercy of a nudge that, the reverse
Of the reverse, would set
The cosmos at his feet
Anew).

So tell me
Then
You who know:

To be or not?

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