Yannis Ritsos
SONG FOR THE QUIET DEATH
(Simply and indeterminately)
Death
stands beneath the streetlamp,
he
rolls a cigarette and smokes,
the
smoke comes from his mouth.
We
watched him smoking
and
he had spittle in his mouth
and
a tongue in his mouth,
and
he had fingers.
He
rolled his cigarette quietly.
He
watched nothing. He smoked.
Quiet
death, beneath the streetlamp –
his
clothes were made of glass,
his
body and his breath were glass,
his
desolation was of glass.
And
behind that glass could be seen
as
through a window-pane
the
pick and shovel,
our
kitchen’s hearth,
even
our broom.
Behind
the window-pane, the gamekeeper walked down.
Shouting women
washed laundry in the river.
No
voice could be heard.
The verger picked up his straw pallet,
carried it to the other room,
and locked the door. And you could see
the pallet and the verger;
his body’s vapour as he lay upon the pallet
fashioned another body in the air.
And behind the locked cupboard could be seen
the shotgun and the shirt,
patched at the elbow –
a white shirt, white, whiter even than white
like Sunday
at a mirador,
like
moonlit marble.
Death
wore a white shirt,
white
as mute daybreak
after
a crime.
As
for death, he was a white shirt;
no
bloodstain darkened it –
an
empty shirt, spread on the line,
dried
by yesterday's heat,
gleaming
in moonlight, stiff as bone,
like
a laid table white upon the terrace.
No
one sat down to eat. A white night.
And
the table stood there, laden, unwavering
as
a lake in the night.
A
knife walked upright through the night
along
the table’s edge
like
a sleepwalker on a roof;
-
it did not fall; it was not sorrow.
An
empty balance, poised in vacuum, weighed itself,
weighed
emptiness though without weights;
silence
weighed both pans equally
like
the two shoulders of the shadow wandering
inside
the shuttered shop.
It
was so quiet behind death,
behind
his window-panes -
a
quiet sea at sunset.
Then
three men came in with their caps,
with
their big feet,
with
beetled brows.
They
broke bread on their knee.
They
did not cross themselves.
They
sat and ate.
Γιάννης Ρίτσος, «Τραγούδι για τον ήσυχο θάνατο», από τη Γενική Δοκιμή
Μετάφραση Γιάννης Σταθάτος
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