Two poems by Iannis Ritsos
(tr. from the Greek by Nikos Stangos)
Approximately
He picks up in his hands things that don’t match – a stone,
a broken roof-tile, two burned matches,
the rusty nail from the wall opposite,
the leaf that came in through the window, the drops
dropping from the watered flower pots, that bit of straw
the wind blew in your hair yesterday – he takes them
and he builds, in his backyard, approximately a tree.
Poetry is in this ‘approximately’. Can you see it?
Around the well
The thee women sat around the well holding their pitchers.
Big red leaves fell on their hair and shoulders.
Someone hidden behind the plane-trees threw a stone.
The pitcher broke. The water did not spill; it remained standing,
all shining, looking towards where we were hiding.
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Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis
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