"Mirabeau Bridge" Guillaume Apollinaire

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away

          And lovers

    Must I be reminded

Joy came always after pain

         The night is a clock chiming

         The days go by not I

We're face to face and hand in hand

         While under the bridges

    Of embrace expire

Eternal tired tidal eyes

         The night is a clock chiming

         The days go by not I

Love elapses like the river

         Love goes by

    Poor life is indolent

And expectation always violent

         The night is a clock chiming

         The days go by not I

The days and equally the weeks elapse

         The past remains the past

    Love remains lost

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away

         The night is a clock chiming

         The days go by not I

"Προνομια θνητων" Βλαβιανος Χαρης

Να ζεις με τη φθορα σου
Να ζεις με τη βεβαιοτητα του θανατου σου
Και να γελας ομορφα,δυνατα
Να γελας σαν αθανατος

"A Last Confession" William Butler Yeats

What lively lad most pleasured me
Of all that with me lay?
I answer that I gave my soul
And loved in misery,
But had great pleasure with a lad
That I loved bodily.

Flinging from his arms I laughed
To think his passion such
He fancied that I gave a soul
Did but our bodies touch,
And laughed upon his breast to think
Beast gave beast as much.

I gave what other women gave
That stepped out of their clothes.
But when this soul, its body off,
Naked to naked goes,
He it has found shall find therein
What none other knows,

And give his own and take his own
And rule in his own right;
And though it loved in misery
Close and cling so tight,
There's not a bird of day that dare
Extinguish that delight.

"RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT" T.S. Eliot

WELVE o'clock.

Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory

And all its clear relations,

Its divisions and precisions,

Every street lamp that I pass

Beats like a fatalistic drum,

And through the spaces of the dark

Midnight shakes the memory

As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

 

Half-past one,

The street lamp sputtered,

The street lamp muttered,

The street lamp said, "Regard that woman

Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door

Which opens on her like a grin.

You see the border of her dress

Is torn and stained with sand,

And you see the corner of her eye

Twists like a crooked pin."

 

The memory throws up high and dry

A crowd of twisted things;

A twisted branch upon the beach

Eaten smooth, and polished

As if the world gave up

The secret of its skeleton,

Stiff and white.

A broken spring in a factory yard,

Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left

Hard and curled and ready to snap.

 

Half-past two,

The street lamp said,

"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,

Slips out its tongue

And devours a morsel of rancid butter."

So the hand of a child, automatic,

Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.

I could see nothing behind that child's eye.

I have seen eyes in the street

Trying to peer through lighted shutters,

And a crab one afternoon in a pool,

An old crab with barnacles on his back,

Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

 

Half-past three,

The lamp sputtered,

The lamp muttered in the dark.

 

The lamp hummed:

"Regard the moon,

La lune ne garde aucune rancune,

She winks a feeble eye,

She smiles into corners.

She smoothes the hair of the grass.

The moon has lost her memory.

A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,

Her hand twists a paper rose,

That smells of dust and old Cologne,

She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells

That cross and cross across her brain."

The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums

And dust in crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,

And female smells in shuttered rooms,

And cigarettes in corridors

And cocktail smells in bars."

 

The lamp said,

"Four o'clock,

Here is the number on the door.

Memory!

You have the key,

The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,

Mount.

The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,

Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

 

The last twist of the knife.

"Ιστοριες του δασους"

Ετσι τον φανταζομαι τον ερωτας μας:
ενα αγριο,σκοτεινο δασος 
κι εσενα να τρεχεις μεσα του γυμνη.
Κι οταν θα πεφτει η παγωμενη νυχτα
-γιατι οι νυχτες θα ειναι παντα παγωμενες-
να ερχεσαι και να κουρνιαζεις διπλα μου,να μοιραζεσαι την ζεστασια μου,
και να μου ψυθιριζεις τις ιστοριες του δασους...

~Γιαννης Μαυροματιδης~