Yánnis Patílis
From: The Scribe's Mirror (1989)
Attempt Against Silence
Since the vortex of colours
Is white, is silence
The great contortion of all that's spoken
No one will be able to analyze
Silence, no spectroscope
A desert inside everyone
Thick dust that time's slow wind
Cannot exhaust
Raising the small clouds of idle talk
In various shapes (sometimes poetic)
Which change shape again since
Dust will never settle
Because time — the one who blows —
Is Madness (and nothing
Stops Madness). The fools we are
Continuing to talk of silence
As if a grain of sand could talk
Of the desert
(Which settles inside everyone).
Translated by Stathis Gourgouris
Page(s) 73-74
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