Níkos Davvétas
From: The Yellow Darkness of Van Gogh (1995)
Migration
her face lifeless
her flesh wasted
only her eyes
alive as before.
Hesitant she raised her hand
to wipe away the years,
that the dead flesh fall like plaster
but her hand hung in the air
between us a swollen river rushed
changing its course
I bent to see her image in the water
and noticed the wings at the back;
then I remembered our last night
coming back from the Resurrection Service
high on the lintel she marked with the candle
a little black cross'*
as if to add up a numberless sum
'We are the numbers,' she shouted
to the right of the cross the living
to the left the dead
and the total the left-over
grave-goods and jewels.'
*It is customary at the midnight mass celebrating Christ's resurrection to light a candle and carry it home, there to use its flame to mark a cross on the door lintel (Translator's note).
Translated by Simon Darragh
Page(s) 180-181
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