Theoklis Kouyialis, translated from Greek by Nora Clark Liassis
Eurydike

Our days blossomed like flowers, and through the polyphonic pathways of colours they reached up to the sky.

Just as the month of October draws silently near with arms full of an abundance of gold from falling leaves, so too Eurydike would advance, like the smell of dried figs, to light up the slow-dying summer of Saint Dimitris.

Do you remember Eurydike, that plump neighbor of ours with her bellowing laughter and crusty grapes, like balls of coloured glass?

When the frogs with their croaking pull the night down over the green swamps of the Pedias and the cluster of the moon, hovering among the vine branches, marks midnight, then at such times Eurydike, like a goodly shadow, sets aside her own special hour to go to the orchard alongside Kamini.

With newly-awakened eyes she marvels at the eggshell brightness of the twinkling stars.

She listens to the mysterious cracking of seed in the freshly-watered field, the tremulous straining of the stalk, the underground current of the dream, the flaming quiver in the pomegranate flowers, the light scent from fallen kaisia.

She is listening. . .

Everything stays suspended between Man and God, while the moon dangles silver violets on the outer tips of the branches of the plum tree.

Eurydike’s eyes open wide like pumpkin flowers, within the drowsy mist that falls from the transparent indigo sky right down along the length of the River.

The blowing of the scented wind spreads through the channels of dreams, sounding like a music deep and unearthly, and from the chinks of the night glowworms are projected with a wailing light.

Beetles, mounted on balls of ivory, manage to radiate their own ashen-like colour. And now only the silence remains, to shine as milk does on the lips of a child.

“Ah, Deftera, a paradise. . . ”

Pipis is singing, after a bout of heavy drinking again this evening at Achilleas Roussos’ taverna, in company with Karamezos. He sings, and breaks the deep blue glass of the night.

Getting annoyed at the disturbance Eurydike scolds him. But then, just like a wind that stammers baffling whispers among the corn fields, she makes the sign of the cross and exclaims: “O forgive me, Lord!”

Eurydike. God bless her!

NB: This piece appeared previously in the volume My Own Deftera (Moufflon Publishing, 2007).

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