| Eurydike
Our days blossomed like flowers, and through the polyphonic
pathways of colours they reached up to the sky.
Just as the month of October draws silently near with arms
full of an abundance of gold from falling leaves, so too
Eurydike would advance, like the smell of dried figs, to
light up the slow-dying summer of Saint Dimitris.
Do you remember Eurydike, that plump neighbor of ours with
her bellowing laughter and crusty grapes, like balls of
coloured glass?
When the frogs with their croaking pull the night down
over the green swamps of the Pedias and the cluster of the
moon, hovering among the vine branches, marks midnight,
then at such times Eurydike, like a goodly shadow, sets
aside her own special hour to go to the orchard alongside
Kamini.
With newly-awakened eyes she marvels at the eggshell brightness
of the twinkling stars.
She listens to the mysterious cracking of seed in the freshly-watered
field, the tremulous straining of the stalk, the underground
current of the dream, the flaming quiver in the pomegranate
flowers, the light scent from fallen kaisia.
She is listening. . .
Everything stays suspended between Man and God, while the
moon dangles silver violets on the outer tips of the branches
of the plum tree.
Eurydike’s eyes open wide like pumpkin flowers, within
the drowsy mist that falls from the transparent indigo sky
right down along the length of the River.
The blowing of the scented wind spreads through the channels
of dreams, sounding like a music deep and unearthly, and
from the chinks of the night glowworms are projected with
a wailing light.
Beetles, mounted on balls of ivory, manage to radiate their
own ashen-like colour. And now only the silence remains,
to shine as milk does on the lips of a child.
“Ah, Deftera, a paradise. . . ”
Pipis is singing, after a bout of heavy drinking again
this evening at Achilleas Roussos’ taverna, in company
with Karamezos. He sings, and breaks the deep blue glass
of the night.
Getting annoyed at the disturbance Eurydike scolds him.
But then, just like a wind that stammers baffling whispers
among the corn fields, she makes the sign of the cross and
exclaims: “O forgive me, Lord!”
Eurydike. God bless her!
by Theoklis Kouyialis
translated from Greek by Nora Clark Liassis
appearing in Hawk & Whippoorwill Volume 1,
Number 1 , Summer 2008
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