Unseen, beneath the load-bearing city,
he still gathers the waters of Lycabettus,
Eridanus, the ancient stream.
At Monastiraki, the train station,
if the crowd of passers-by ever quietens,
you hear, the cathartic ripple of a running tap, its waters.
And if you were to get off at Kerameikos,
you’d see him, among the ancient tombs,
himself a memory of his self, the slight,
freely breathing the sun at the trench with the reeds,
before abandoning Iera Odos and the Demosion Sema,
‘having brought his lamentations to a close’.
only to be lost again under Peireos street, in Gazi.
Silent while noise abounds: you can’t hear him.
All around the flow of more and more people and vehicles,
they come and go.
He, stays there.
Athens, December 2009
