KATERINA ANGHELAKI ROOKE

Translated from the Modern Greek by James N. Stone

I peer at life through a keyhole.
If I look closely enough, maybe I’ll understand
how life always wins
while all of us lose.
How values are born
and branded onto the body
which is the first to melt.
I am dying inside my mind without any hint of sickness.
I live without the slightest need of encouragement.
At least I’m breathing. Who cares
if I can almost touch warm things
about to go up in flames.
I wonder what other connections
life will invent between the trauma
of absolute disappearance and the miracle
of every day immortality.
I owe my wisdom to fear;
I dispense with petals, sighs, subtleties.
I clutch earth, air, roots.
The useless things can go, I say.
Let me in to the sky of nothingness,
with next to nothing.