Five Soldiers

(War Diary  )

 

How did I find myself suddenly so distant?

(I could never understand

how much the moment when you sit

between two fires can be annihilated).

 

I had to defend myself so as to live.

It had slipped so mysteriously from my body

and scattered around me

so that I was inseparably tied

to reality and to my companions.

 

We went on together

bound tight by necessity

with hearts changed

from breast to breast.

 

We weren’t permitted to speak

to ourselves.

We turned our eyes almost as one:

on the far horizon

a thousand birds were lost in disarray.

 

We had already covered

 a great distance on foot.

At that point where we found ourselves

we could make out

a red signpost.

We wondered if it could mark

the border that separates

the past from the future.

At that point we tightened the straps of our helmets

at the cheek, trying to breathe 

with the frigid air

some thought that might hold up

in this sad landscape.

 

The roofs of the houses

echo the sounds

of our footsteps in fear.

We see our tired shadows

mirrored in the cloudy eyes of the sky

as we move carefully ahead

holding each other by the hand

across the line that etches

the brow of war.

Behind the dark apartment building

waits the hairy hand

of Polyphemus.

We are five companions

holding each other by the hand,

our hearts leached

in the snow of night

and the painted fields

of spring.

 

Soon it began to grow light.

At first my eyes watered

then I got used to it and I could make out

my mother’s hand

as it came to moisten my eyelashes.

 

Sunk in the mud

I hold my rifle tight in my hand.

For a moment I felt my head 

detach itself from my body

and go to another body

and then to another and another.

The landscape was full of headless bodies

and only my head moved around

from body to body.

What had happened, then,

to the heads of my companions?

 

 

Someone pulled the screen of rain across

and I felt as if I were alone

so I tried to take advantage

of this moment to look at myself.

 

(The clouds are not far above the earth.

They have moved down.

I believe that by morning

there won’t be anything left.

They’ll begin with the tall apartment buildings

and the smokestacks of Piraeus.

The walls will buckle and break bit by bit.

Then it will be the turn of the houses.

Finally they’ll demolish the slums

and the wooden hovels at Dourgouti).

 

Then, on the opposite corner

five men appeared.

They were five men of ancient Athens

in heavy winter tunics.

 

It was high time because the earth

had become liquid and stormy.

We crawled towards them

and we all saw

our City

tossing about,

rudderless and drunken.

 

Slowly, completely unexpectedly

beside these men

we discovered we were human

and we had a heart in our breast.

The German helmets

pulled low on the forehead

no longer prevented us from seeing our eyes.

My Beloved

greeted me at the entrance to the park

with her blue scarf.

 

 

But it was futile.

A noise began to rise

from one side of the city to the other.

All five of us immediately dived

into the stormy sea.

As we swam

we felt our hearts bending

for the first time like a cypress.

We reached the avenue and could see

the endless row of those who’d been hanged

 

 

My Mother and my Beloved

My Mother and my Beloved

My Mother and my Beloved

A thousand times.

My Mother and my Beloved.

And the shells passing overhead 

from the boats at Phaleron

formed a multicolored

festive arbor. 

 

The five companions were anxious when we were late

but they held on strongly to our position.

In the momentary flashes of the rifles

one could make out

the thin red thread that linked our hearts.

The sky and the clouds

descended towards the city.

Around us the sea swelled

and the waves

burned the eyes in our faces.

From the hill of Ardittos

a loudspeaker could be heard cutting out:

“Athens never dies. It is victorious.”

But the dawn seemed as if it would never come.

As they descended, the sky

and the clouds rested on some high buildings

and the smokestacks of Piraeus.

And the sea rose up from below and caught us.

 

Suddenly in the storm a light appeared

and your voice echoed loudly

before the wave could snatch it.

It was strong enough to bear us up

for quite some time on the surface.

 

But it was already too late.

Now, just as our hearts

opened their doors wide

to the love of the earth

the vast sea suddenly dried up

and the waves became black birds.

Your voice was useless now

that we found ourselves lying stretched out

among the ruins

with the others passing by and trampling on us.

 

We struggled with the waves and on the sea

day and night

but we didn’t learn any more

than what a crumb of earth knows.

Ask the smallest leaf on the tree in our courtyard

that plays lightly in the wind

and it will tell you why

we five beardless soldiers of December

straddled the border of death

with so much love.