translated by Maria Nazos

I want to confess to something I can’t explain but it happens.
We’re here—
in this part of the river that twists.
Surrounding hills/ a blue sky/
what you’ll never be given again/ dust.
Your hand floating in my hand
early and warm.
You try to breathe
to take in the new reality which embraces you
without demand, escape, or opposition.
What absorbs you at this moment
are the stalks sugar-coated from frost
that snap easily beneath your footsteps.
You have almost forgotten me.
The world ahead
-rough-
with all its worlds
still you play
enduring the air’s incessant changes
reveling with open senses—
your consciousness
has just learned to resist this deafening rhetoric.
“Wind”— I say
You are old enough to understand too young to reciprocate
the compliment of a still-unknown word.
The river gushes.
Its surface surges.
I’d like to walk here with you for hours
within the murky churning of water
constricts/ swells/ uncoils

a mechanism of flow
propels the landscape into motion.
Without being able to convince you
I’d like to say
this will last after me— after us.
Blue swells of horizon before us.
The ink fills with tense anticipation
—I insist on spending my remaining time this way—
Looks like you are saying something.
We, a perfect creation of speech
have yielded to words
(this is one facet of reality, one aspect of the world)
I want to say—
I say: pure
then turn and look elsewhere.

     The Constant Narrative, Patakis Publications, Athens, 2017