Yánnis Patílis
From: The Scribe's Mirror (1989)
Birds
Like plaster sometimes in whole pieces
Which lose their lustre as they fall
Become opaque, soft, and warm
They grow fur and down and feathers
And on their brown colour now
They mirror dirt
This is the sky from up close
This is how it comes closer
Everyone now can reach it
(Even those blessed children
With the sling-shots)
Because it exhausts you high up
Eternal and unfractured
Without love's caresses to wear you down
Something you cannot stand and break
In places, crack and strip in whole pieces
Which lose their lustre as they fall
They grow fur and down and feathers
(Because nobody kills you without a motive)
And they fall
They fall
Upon this earth where constantly the sky
Comes to die.
Translated by Stathis Gourgouris
Page(s) 74-75
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