Philopappou Hill

on your way downwards, hold your breath, look aside:

Purple dying to crimson, long cry of a bird
Somewhere in the impossibility of height:
A fragment of the sky, a fallen fragile flower,
Losing all spectra - one by one - to the marble-gray

horses, hoarse and humble, hungry, howling –
legs, a crumpled spiral of a broken clock:
a seal on the emptiness, the approval of bygone being
crashed like mean memories with their native smell of dust
perfect creatures, you have lost your stagnant riders
as someone loses control of reason over his passion
he’s free now, though hurt, and breathes cold wet air
solemnly, to the depth of his lungs, saturated with the mist of meadows

Wind kisses you, wiping you down, and yet may
Leave your brittle contour to face this fast fierce night
When she leans, soft and tender, loosing her hair, the white tower
Glimpses: her tongue, touching the land, licking the day’s last chord

the tower, trembling in the darkness, weeping like a lonely bride



* A hill in Athens, opposite Acropolis, on top of which there are remains of an ancient monument with half-preserved reliefs depicting, among other things, pensive horse-riders.