Jenny Mastoráki
From: Tolls (1972)
A. People and institutions
Then the Trojan horse said
no, I refuse to see the Press,
and they said why, and he said
he knew nothing about the massacre.
After all,
he always ate lightly in the evening
and in his younger days
he had worked a stint
as a wooden pony
on a merry-go-round.
[...]
This harsh land
grabs the farmer by his shoulders
and shakes him.
The doors have folded their arms
across their chest
and listen off in the distance.
Our desires can pass.
We paid the toll
for truckloads.
[...]
They sang a song all their own.
Then
out of their open shirts
the soil of homeland
would pour in shovelfuls
mountains and olive groves.
And from their temples
longing would evaporate
the way steam escaping
from the lid of a pot
takes with it
something of the sadness of the bean
and the bitter taste of wild chicory.
[...]
This silence which I nurtured
between four walls
was destined early on
to become a song.
A deep, dark song
like water in a wishing well
and like the pocket
of my mother's apron.
To give to each their share.
To spread out like the great message of cranes
in the streets, in the squares
in the public urinals
in the waiting rooms of train stations.
A song like the Palm Sunday liturgy
a song of bread and water
a song of people
my song.
The grown ups
carry around inside them
the child they once were
during the Second World War
the girl they never kissed
the incurable sadness of hunger.
The first fuzz on their upper lip
Cavafy's Barbarians
and an old consumption.
Their days
registered in food rations.
A nail in the wall
could mark a whole season
— in the summer they shaved
with the mirror hanging from the window.
Tenement dreams
like a motorcycle with a side car
for large families.
We
simply carry around inside us
the grown ups.
The day that's over
leaves you a telephone token
though you don't know who to call
and who to tell
that outside the sunset spreads leaflets
over the weather-vanes.
The day leaves a scrap of paper
clasped in your hand,
a bruised message.
So here you are, holding the token
looking at it, on one side
the rough profile of Justice
and on the other Hermes' staff
symbols which
no matter how much you want
you can't explain
[...]
Translated by Karen Van Dyck
Page(s) 98-100
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