Dine Doneff ( Theodorou Kostas )

The chorus arrives, here, the entrance to the village,
susurration, elm leaves, stillness, a summons,
Beside the big stone, water
babble of voices, waiting ones,
Penelopes of Xanthogeia,
Rousilvo, living, dead,
Oblivion willed on the unwillingly.
Mirka the teacher breathes yet
and you Natsko never old enough to love
death
mourning, prescribed in silence
homecoming to unbelonging.
In the sequestered minds of the men of substance, ashes and blood,
and looming, there in the snow, Kaimaktsalan, custodian of bones.
Implacable grief, oxygen cannot be bartered
And now, what lips are left to mouth the song of freedom?

Only ligering echoes of the melody of the forbidden language
and undaunted dancing to songs without words.
Sometimes, once in a while
comfort to our ears, the stealthy significance of the unwritten,
like some secret, dignified in silence
liquid lamentations over the graves of our forbears
where we mutes have just bid farewell,
and the villages, where behind us we left
bewildered windows and doors gaping in the wind
without crier or priest, or a pitcher for the spring. 

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