I
KASTANIA
Up there, like yesterday, they shot forty.
Twenty years have gone by. Nobody's spoken their names.
You understand our life. Each year,
on a similar day, they've been finding in hiding places
a ripped canvas, two extinguished braziers, a little incense,
a basketful of grapes, a candle
with a black wick. It's been
~lmost
impossible to light it.
The wind's been blowing it out.
That's why, in the evening, the old women are sitting
in the doorways like ancient ikons,
that's why the eyes of our children have grown
large so quickly
and why our dogs pretend to look elsewhere
when policemen pass by.
Vamnis R(tsos
(Translated
by
Bertrand Mathieu)
