The Time Dimension
Hallway, door, hallway, door; half-light; afternoon leaning toward dusk. All the doors
open to the far end. People made of plaster, bent over, are sitting alone, each to a bench. The last,
in the innermost hallway, barely distinguishable like the head of a pin:
......................................................................................"
volume, maybe pain as well." That's what he was saying.
Nobody believed him or even paid attention to him. On the right, through the dust-covered, barred window,
you could see, passing by under artificial noon sunshine, a tall, immense bus full of people on an excursion,
plaster boys, plaster girls with spearguns, with those long plastic flippers,
very blue or yellow, hanging in the windows.
Nobody believed him or even paid attention to him. On the right, through the dust-covered, barred window,
you could see, passing by under artificial noon sunshine, a tall, immense bus full of people on an excursion,
plaster boys, plaster girls with spearguns, with those long plastic flippers,
very blue or yellow, hanging in the windows.
(Was the absence of a conclusion, then, the essence?)
translated by Edmund Keeley
Yannis Ritsos (1909-1980): The Time Dimension, 1971, from The Wall Inside the Mirror, 1974, in Exile and Return: Selected Poems 1967-1974, translated by Edmund Keeley, 1985
No comments:
Post a Comment