Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Laugh, my silly girl,
No one witnesses your wildflower growth.
The flowing spring, your lover,
Chases you from sky to ravine, flooding the islands of your heart,
Taking mountain peaks without measure from the river’s hands—
Formless, a face in motion.
How beautiful! Who says the Danube or Nile surpasses you?
Who has ever seen your source?
Now you come, enchanting in your quietude,
As if untouched by Verlaine and Rimbaud’s quarrels.
You know no affectation, lost in Chopin’s rhythms.
That boy, wiser and braver than Odysseus,
Born from the moon’s belly—you wait.
Yes, against his chest hangs a stone more precious than “Precious Jade,”
Fertile in water, birthing beauty.
But listen, my dear mortal, beware temptation’s curse—
Nuwa and Jesus, frauds of grand deceit.
Who, in joy, sowed the sperm and egg of human sorrow?
Endless disasters,
Embryos enduring sun and storm,
Lashed by time, toyed with by so-called fate.
All sin belongs to love, to you,
To places the sun never touches.
Only this clear night brings tender solace,
Carrying dew from your hair into your gaze.
I clutch the pine’s hand, a relic of childhood.
I refuse—refuse the sky-blue allure of day,
As noon slips silently through flame.
Those who claim to merge with the cosmos—
Their every breath begets suffering.
Mud ribs, ape bones—each a lie. Truth?
Names scribbled in thin notebooks
Will rot with the earth, battered by seasons.
Little stream, source of my life, my blood and breath,
Restore the world’s innate fragrance,
Return true tears to the rain, so she no longer gasps
Like a fish on land, reliving faceless pasts.
Everything Crumbles by Anna Keiko
Night cannot grasp the soul—oppressed organs
Like roses pounding a vase: *Let me out!*
Screams shatter the quiet of midnight.
When will the churning clamor let daylight rest?
Escaping death’s lanterns, we wait for night’s tenderness.
The room hugs its own shadow, lonely.
Love, stabbed, writhes on the floor—
Pain takes a group photo with hypocrisy.
You walk past, skirt the horizon, then turn—your gaze terrifies me.
Crimson mountains loom like an endless ship
Ferrying dead days.
Sweet white light records lovers lost to sleep.
Only she still weaves swan-song dreams.
Spring has no birds, no love,
No grass or trees’ green, no home where forest songs nest.
Everything perishes in every rushing moment—
Yet windows and every wrinkle bear rivers on their backs,
Dug by you. How cruel!
You steal my fair forehead and my hidden garden.
You fear sails descending from silver skies,
Feet you cannot catch or keep.
Yes, you are great—
Irreplicably great, stirring laughter and tears.
Sleepwalkers drive mankind forward. *Onward!*
After winter, no more death, no more—
Yet all is reborn on spring’s wanton branches.
They manufacture sorrow. Streams murmur.
The river of life forces you to confess:
*Nothing truly dies. It lives forever—*
White funeral notes rising from the air.
Ah, wicked wind sweeps the hollow woods,
Forcing kisses on my dreaming self.
Those scarlet lips will tear through self-spun webs
To reclaim this ignoble past.
