Three Poems after Yannis Ritsos

There are graves under the houses and houses

under the graves and linking the three

a broad stone staircase where the dead

go up and the living go down. They pass one another

wordlessly which might mean they don’t know, or else

they’re pretending not to know. You can smell

the orange grove on the hill; you can hear

children bowling barrel hoops down the street.

Two women gossip as they fill their jug at the spring.

Their secrets cloud the water.

Later they walk back through an avenue

of   cypresses, carrying the jug like a bastard child.

In the house across the street, in a room

directly opposite his, was a long mirror. When he looked

out of   his window, he would see himself   in the room

like a thief caught in a trap. He threw a stone.

His neighbor ran in to the sound of   breaking glass,

then came to the window and shouted across:

“Thank God for that: whenever I looked in my mirror

there you were, doing something shifty behind my back.”

The first man turned away. The long mirror in his room

brought him face to face with his neighbor, knife in hand.

Just as he locked the door, as he pocketed the key,

as he glanced over his shoulder, they arrested him.

They tortured him until they tired of   it.

                                                                         “Look,” they said,

“the key is your key, the house is your house,

we accept that now; but why did you put the key

in your pocket as if to hide it from us?”

They let him go, but his name is still on a list.