Young Sun

an exercise after Elytis

Carved-in days first came to visit my brow
long ago
With white hair and white dreams
lately I recalled again the haze of the afternoons

of the summer, of the high roof, of the sofa
and the broken table heaped with paper napkins
of the gulls and their song, of the surf you could not hear
for the traffic in the streets

Back then the sun was young like me
and did not burn the eyes or the thoughts
like sparrows they pecked a little at a time
and flew off, startled by every passer-by

A gaunt suspicion only
sometimes behind the lowered curtains
there where I had never stepped beyond
the glimpsed toward the suspected
that it is perfection, the feeling of creating

It must have been an altar-chimera
the hunted dream of a meek snail

Those three women dealt out the cards
on the bus in silence and did not look at each other they knew
as much as I did and a little more but what
did they feel? Earthly things? Perhaps. I did not ask them.

And the cold is here. It comes from the road north.
And the dark leaves, struck against the glass, and the memory
that I am returning everything
befalls me always anew

The music stopped the white tablecloth is drunk
Like a finished, dried-out painting
and days carved into the brow white
thoughts in the hair so
old is everything. A door opened. I got off at home.

2007