Elegy

For Agamemnon Danis

A hundred raised hands wave

and disappear in the dusk

and you, lost comrade,

greet and hearten them, as you sit

on the knee of the sun.

(Silence sinking with loosened hair --

above the deep sigh of the earth;

beneath the olives a cry

of lament that’s been forgotten).

From far-off Chios, in Petropoulis

and from Asia at Ay Ilia

we felt the sky bend

and kiss our wound

and you, lost comrade, 

were a thousand birds

flying South!

And girls came from Daphne

and from Steli, bitter mothers;

from Arethousa and Vrakades, folk in black,

and from Armenisti came old fishermen

with hearts salted by sea and tears

and they sat all round us

and a shrill lament began.

And you were the sigh of the people

the wing-beat of a vulture

that pounces!