WORDS AGAIN
Words in their thousands pour out of dictionaries
as soon as you open them
like ants, black, red, white,
when you step on an ant-hill.
How can you find, how can you choose
amid the conflation of words
the only one that fits,
how can you escape from the others
that stick to your body in swarms
struggling to survive.
Yet the unspoken words beneath the tongue
the only ones that don’t emerge from your mouth
they too gnaw from within
leaving shrivelled corpses
of people who tried to speak
when it was too late.
As long as I’m able
to combine even two words
I exist.
as soon as you open them
like ants, black, red, white,
when you step on an ant-hill.
How can you find, how can you choose
amid the conflation of words
the only one that fits,
how can you escape from the others
that stick to your body in swarms
struggling to survive.
Yet the unspoken words beneath the tongue
the only ones that don’t emerge from your mouth
they too gnaw from within
leaving shrivelled corpses
of people who tried to speak
when it was too late.
As long as I’m able
to combine even two words
I exist.
© Translation: 2005, Peter Mackridge
© 1992, Titos Patríkios
From: I Idoni ton Parataseon
Publisher: Kedros, Athens
From: I Idoni ton Parataseon
Publisher: Kedros, Athens
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