for Alexandros Christopoulos
Others live as ghosts within us,
and we within the others.
When life reaches its end,
fragments of the dead
are saved within the survivors.
Those things we carved in caves
and on canvases with frantic struggle,
they remain.
The Pyramids and the Hanging Gardens,
Homer’s epics and the Parthenon,
Marathon and Thermopylae,
the Granicus and the daring roll of the dice
as far as Maracanda-
the Colosseum and the four Gospels-
Hagia Sophia and the Gothic cathedrals-
battles of Lepanto and Waterloo;
Castle-clad peaks and city-states,
lives of saints and illustrious men-
romances, otherworldly melodies-
laborious trackings of the infinite-
revolutions plotted in a vacuum-
expertise in the soothing of pain.
All that our stubborn Will sired
and impartial Fortune, for her part,
consented to preserve.
TAKIS PIERRAKOS (all rights reserved)
