Nora Clark Liassis
Memorial Service

for Ramona

I was planning to speak to you about the Memorial service for Damianos and Anna, but then you sighed, and the pathways in response filled up with amber-colored Virgin’s Tears.

“It is only within us that our loved ones don’t die,” you remarked. But how that voice of yours spread out like the scent of aniseed!

Little branches of light are held captive in the brambles. such are the wonderful evenings of your August, my Deftera, evenings that fan me and uplift me to the stars out of love. And just look at you dripping with light, all white, silver, and sweet-smelling!

At that instant when the deep purple twilight wraps you in its transparent tulle, the roofs of the houses all at once find themselves emptied of their weight.

The sun has strewn its last roses over the top of the cypress tree and their fragrance drops as noiselessly as a mother’s love.

Big moist carnations, geraniums and marigolds are knitted at your feet.

Damianos and Anna open the garden gate and the orchard, like a cooling watermelon, is delivered up to our thirst.

A crow dashes herself into her own shadow. Further down, a ploughman pulls up scents from the freshly-watered soil and offers them to the violet breeze, right on that spot where the sun turns a golden light on the ditch.

Here, where the water has fallen asleep, two chestnut-coloured leaves, the image of little boats, wait to ferry away our souls.

Now we should be able to get drunk on song and mystery. It would be so very easy to get drunk on that peach glow which the sun ignites on a delicate branch.

But the problem you see, my Deftera, is that a cloud of lead is hanging in the archway where, I am inclined to say, your soul is going to blossom forth, but only in black jasmine.

And what will I become with so much black jasmine all around me? And how can I even consider speaking to you about Damianos and Anna, especially now that the silence of the twilight is disrupted by the warbling of the late-departing swallows; or, put it this way, now that the orchards are completely deserted and human beings have abandoned the earth…?

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