PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN ASLEEP

You come towards me every night, with charioteer’s steps.
Your rusty tunic pulls you to the past.
And you, in despair, lash at all those wild years lashing you.

I wake terrified. I jump up.
My sunless bedroom is now bathed in light
Drowning in ivies and vague waving greens.
In them cyclops butterflies nest, mute crickets,

The large shadow of a billowing tunic, gold arms
Engraved with horses howling like hounds,
Horrible conjunctions.
Armies of soldiers that have followed you are carrying spears and
         shields
covered in blood, battalions,

But also heavy marble statues
And heavy marble funerary stelae and urns, surrounding you,

They cross my sunless bedroom.

1984

(Translated by: Nikos Stangos)