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We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Translated from the Greek by Cecile Inglessis Margellos and Rika Lesser
Deep down I don’t like ash
it is too intransigent
its manner conveys
a gray enmity
toward whatsoever lies close to a flame
look
it turned even fire, its own mother,
to ash
nonetheless to ash I will entrust myself
it leaves no muddy footprints
on the body
lightly you are scattered
like powder that has remained
on the face of your biography
to ash I will entrust myself
dirt is too great a burden
you can’t breathe
compressed from above too by those flowerpots
your family brings—
also heavy with all the water they drink in
you are chilled through by humidity
archenemy of your neck
but let’s suppose you do want to feel the pain
even if you don’t write it down
it will be doubly wasted
where would you write it
this blackboard
is not sky
and what remains
is not chalk.
To ashes I will give myself.
You see the world differently
when scattered from above
you breathe birds
inhale the scent of mystery
of Sacrament deeply
like ether in cotton
and like cotton it absorbs you
clouds will carry
your mementos for you
rain, umbrella, medicine, cigarettes
let’s not forget kisses
all these charred remains
in any case
indisputably through the ashes
on your charred remains
again you have lived
and again you have written
the very same things.
Kiki Dimoula, winner of the 2009 European Prize for Literature, is author of the forthcoming The Brazen Plagiarist.
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