The Journey

Now there is a mill in my bowels, it grinds the darkness of my years
and I say nothing of the voices walking in my brain, nor of the river
we crossed the day before yesterday, its waters flooding memory
from all round –  while you,

you slept and centuries rolled by as I held you and was poor and cold
and my hand grew tired and withered –

or suddenly a spasm in the dregs of the soul,

what did I seek, what did I hold of you?

_{Τάκης Σινόπουλος, από τις Πέτρες (1972)
First published in Takis Sinopoulos: Selected Poems, translated and with an introduction by John Stathatos,
San Francisco & London, 1981. Translation revised 1999.}