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GHOSTS

I

Now that I have dreamed of my beloved
Looking at infinity bleached
The colour of his bones
False feeling was affirmed.

His sharp teeth are his sword
And when I lay my hand upon his confused
Head
The sparkling canines
Put a clamp on it.

Father deliver of this pain
A loss akin to yours.

Lovely day of night
The heart legislates
Enters with a mouth half-open
Ready to bite
 a desolate continuity.
 
 II

This writing is not theatre, just as I have nothing to do with the drama.
A kiss is lethal if love doesn’t become death, as simple as going off the stage.
Something guides me to freedom: it is childish fear before the box of sleepless will.
Mountain ranges intersect with panic in the garden where lives pitiful repetition.  Nothing resembles sunny afternoons.  I sit waiting in the little park right across the Institute, certain this meeting will be a decisive one.  I feel nothing on seeing my prison knocked down.  The rock has nothing to do with the blazing mass, the acme of fury as long as this mania lasts.
And when it slowly separates from the body,
it transforms into a dance which the neighbours
angrily set up.    
 

III

(Ghost of love)

I saw my deeds dancing on a beach.  Behold the sword of intrigue, I said.
Do not whip the ghost of black waters do not shut your eyes to the limpid surface above the sunken city.  Do not deny the tongue once spoken.  Do not follow
the fury, the darkness, the drought.  Follow the heavenly father in the water who acquires feeling when crystalline awe vibrates.   

Veroniki Dalakoura
Translated from the Greek by Yannis Goumas