Lonesome Steps
There exists, they say, a great adventure for each of us, but where
will we find it?
for now we leaf through the old calendars in case we save
something from the years –
truly, what goes on in reality? who remembers what happened
yesterday? everything hazy, confused
in the morning I walk over the rubble of two wars in order to get
to the kitchen for coffee
vagrants watch the trains departing and their eyes are orphaned
for a moment
and it is not rain on the glass-enclosed waiting rooms at the
stations but the unfulfilled journeys that are weeping
drunkards stagger under the weight of the infinite
outside the orphanages the persecuted folk tales fall silent
and the woman by the window is so sad that she is ready to depart
for the sky
everything hazy, confused – the others construct from us a face
for their own use
who are we? nobody knows and only sometimes in our nightmares
do we find part of our true self —
hands that crumbled in awkward gestures
violet-coloured compassion of the twilight which spreads a bit of
regal lace on homes for the aged
the divine right of the poor over the possessions of others
the lonesome steps of a passer-by which remind you of your entire
life
and my father, dead for so many years now, comes each night and gives
me advice in my sleep, “but father,” I tell him, “you forget that we
are the same age”
oh my lost generation – we took great roads, we remained in the
middle
the hour of our death is written on all the clocks
childhood friends, where are you? with whom will I now continue
my wanderings in the infinite? the grown-ups are in the cafes
the crickets in the evening are attempting to pronounce the
ineffable
mother would open the letters with her hairpin
our life is a mystery which we cannot portion out
a sorrow in the afternoons like the aroma from old books
and each time we pass by a pedestrian it is as though we are saying
“goodbye” to the whole of life —
do you remember our erotic moments, Anna? your sex like a half-
opened shell laid there by a distant tempest
your breasts two small heliotropes in unforgettable mornings —
revolutionaries are concerned about the future, lovers about the
past, poets have taken responsibility for both
someday I will commit suicide in dramatic fashion: with hushed
words from old conspiratorial days,
ah, life, a handshake with the infinite before you are lost for ever
children know well that the impossible is the best solution
while the two musicians with the accordion play now in
the depths of dusk for luck
and their hats swim,
shipwrecked in the music.
Tasos Leivaditis (1922-1988) is one of Greece’s most beloved poets. Born and raised in Athens, Leivaditis was imprisoned and persecuted for his political allegiances in the wake of WWII. After his release, he found a new voice in the form of prose-poetry. Leivaditis’ work attempts to move beyond old political and religious certainties, dwelling on loss, lament and doubt, yet he remains profoundly sensitive to beauty, goodness and our endless human search for meaning. Throughout his prose-poems, readers can also detect a Divine presence in conversation with the poet – an abiding voice of “the God who is a questioning of God” – speaking furtively, yet insistently, from within the text.
Lonesome Steps is translated by N.N. Trakakis in Violets for a Season. Northfield, MN: Red Dragonfly Press, 2017