THE BAND

The band marched along the provincial esplanade,
sounding martial airs. A boy of fourteen,
in a wide hat and the proper uniform,
playing the trombone, didn’t notice the turning ahead.

When the band wheeled, the boy continued on
with his wide hat and trombone.

PACIFIC QUARTERLY MOANA (N.Z.), Vol. 5, No. 3, July 1980. Greek and Turkish Poets of Today.
BILIETO (Iraklion), No. 6, 2005.

`

*

MEMORY AGES

I thirst like a parched river.

Your hands, solid stones,
block the riverbed.
A wind, I try prying them with jokes,
now devious, now reckless like a river.

You laugh. Your laughter: two glasses smashing on a desolate shore.
Then you get cross. A shot across the meadows.
Your voice breaks harshly.

If I had died, you wouldn’t have met me.

If you hadn’t left your matches that day
at the station or on the train, you wouldn’t have met me.

Well, had you not left our house
for good that night,
having slipped on your dress, without underwear,
I wouldn’t be a wind now raging with envy.

That’s the way men are:
some mountains, some knives.

And everything ends here,
and here the unforeseen will happen.

Between a final cigarette and night
memory ages,
the voice of a friend fades out
and misunderstanding ceases.

PACIFIC QUARTERLY MOANA (N.Z.), Vol. 5, No. 3, July 1980.

`

*

THE YOUNGEST ONE

In the evenings we all got together — happy times! —
and talked about ships, and eventually women.
Then the one who felt the want of them most,
and was thus a boaster,
took up the conversation — what tales, what yarns he told! —
till his mouth went dry and we sat dumbfounded.

Afterwards, a heavy gloom and silence fell upon us.

It was exactly then one evening,
at this point, that the youngest got up.

Tight-lipped, he vanished,
like an old seadog, into memory. Left without a word.

His mother is still making inquiries.

BILIETO (Iraklion), No. 6, 2005.

`

*

WILD ANIMALS

For even wild animals mellow with the years,
when they no longer have what they desire.

And glassy tears
glisten in their jaundiced eyes.

BILIETO (Iraklion), No. 6, 2005.

`

*

ON THE BEACH IN 1960
OR TO THE RHYTHM OF THE BAND

A family sat on a beach in 1960.

Mother, father and child.

It was July. Sunday morning,
and the sunlight so bright and clear,
the child got up
and moved towards the sea
until it was lost to sight.

That is why, ever since,
far off on the horizon
floats a small white hat
with black band
sailing, sailing away like a little boat.

`

*

LET US LOOK FOR

Let us look for a drop of love
the way poor people purchase rugs at the fair.

Peace isn’t something to be ransomed;
and people breed such loneliness, I told you,
like two black vessels lying one afternoon
in some outlandish port.

Then we fell in love like armless persons on a train,
in a world of their own, consumed by the blundering throng.

Afterwards you left, stealthily, as always.
Thick dusk lingered on the road.

From afar a record could be heard,
voice rising and falling, rising and falling,
like a drunkard toddling along.

The man from the upper precincts
whose wife, they said, had left him,
and the madwoman’s daughter.

Tired songs fell, more likely on the floor,
and broke like glassware upset by burglars.

How shall I write you another poem?
It calls for forgotten words,
like the dress you discarded
on leaving school, and becoming a woman.

It calls for rough, rugged stones.
And I’m not a sailor to search the shores.
Nor do I know anything about stones.

από Σπύρος Αραβανής
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