GUEVARA

GUEVARA

To Thanassis Karavias

It was high noon but it seemed midnight.
The child’s mother said, “Sleep, my treasure”,
but everyone’s eyes stayed open wide
when the hour balanced your body with steel.

A swarm of white ants, a cloud of locusts.
The Chileans lament like the women of Mani.
He left-the fried, the brother. Did we know one another?
The Cretan guards the threshing floor, Arriba the corriba.

Who said it? Who hoped for it?Who’ll bear it?
The birds fly off and their songs is lost.
Nereids shear the black silk from your face
and weave from it ribbons to tie up their hair.

A panther listens, peers and pauses?
licks your wound’s roses, gets drunk and strong.
The earth spewed her guts, and demons leapt out.
The hammer beats strongly, the anvil stays mute.

Fireflies play in the open eyes.
In your lovely mouth a cricket has slept.
From your still warm lips the burnt out end
of a small cigarillo drops to ground.

The dream drifts up with the smoke to the sky;
It’s merging now with the ship of cloud.
Light is born all around but it’s still very faint;
the darkness unravels it and beckons to you.

Jose Marti (the condor flies by,
dives and hovers, remembers, is proud;
with its wings it could darken a threshing-floor).
Tonight you’ll drink mate together.

Bolivar arrives, astride the fast colt.
A pregnant snake is standing in wait.
The Peruvian woman pounds herbs in a mortar
while chewing a poisonous kind of mushroom

Lorca’s red mare is neighing but he
is tangled still in silken bonds.
With his adze of stone the friend makes a coffin
measuring it precisely to fit your frame.

An aging sailor with a tar-stained face
loads a ship with worthless cargo.
A long time ago his arms were cut short.
And he wanted so badly to close your eyes.

Nikos Kavvadias