You and I

Dear Adriana – old lady from the days of yore –
In rain or shine, you and I and many more
Live to toil over many a work and chore:
You peddling flowers from door to door,
And I bound the meaning of words to explore.

Some day, dear Adriana – be it far or near it matters not –,
The ferryman shall carry us over to the other shore,
To the land where pain is pain no more,
But a garden resplendent in shape and form
Where words are flowers that never rot.
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Revision of "Translator in Low Spirits"

Come, O Night!

Come, O Night!
Through the eyes of the Tiger bright.
Chase away the sun’s lingering scent
From the crown of forests canopied high,
From the dales’ deep-rutted spine,
And lay your sable mantle over town, city and sea.

O Night!
Once we could hear the silent gallop
Of your stately Hrimfaxi.
Now, all is an endless drone from Trojan horses
Which race through the bituminous arteries of our brains
Spewing their treacherous load from lungs of iron.

O Night, womb of Day,
Light-footed and gently flowing!
Subdue the edges of the mundane,
Dissolve apparent multiplicities,
Deliver us from the tyranny of the sun
And in your wake reinstate the kingdoms of fire!

To the People of Modern Greece

Divided you fall and die a slow death by the day.
United you shall live, live decently.

Unite and they shall cower at your strength!
Unite and they shall sow the whirlwind!
But wait …! Who are THEY?
Be they the men of office YOU install
To positions of plenty-to-eat-and-plenty-to-steal?
Perhaps those with the gilded mitres and pastoral staffs,
The champions of bigotry and obscurantism?
Perchance the heinous, blood-sucking leeches, our
Institutional money lenders?

No, no my fellow Greeks.
Look inside you! There prowls the enemy:
YOUR ignorance, this invisible worm
Which your political & religious leaders
So meticulously feed with “free education”
And indoctrination.

How to unite then, if you don’t know how?
How to unite to set yourselves free, to prosper
To have a true Democratic governance?
Alas, there is no answer to this question:
“Greeks” and “unity” are contradictio in terminis
Points antipodal on a vicious circle.
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