The Seduction

You turned your head towards darkness

as if you thirsted for silence and escape

beyond that equator which traced

the small lamp's light upon your nape and hair.

Your shoulders retold the tales

of seas and caryatids in the sun

and supported a golden burden of noons.

The nights of adolescence nested in your hair,

in the dark wild vines and the olives

of a myth you could never understand.

O steps upon the sand with heels

swift-winged and foaming, and without trace;

plunges of lightning in waves amidst a thousand

broken plumes and arrows!

The engraved memory of your body on a certain bed, .

images in eyes and in water

are the traces of your existence,

the far limits of your legend.

Fragment of beauty, warm statue

carved on the pediment of night

beyond identity and time;

anonymous like a tree and detached

like a statue; what siby] seeks

your gaze now turned towards darkness?

What murmur of a deep sea

you have never swum whispers

in the shells of your earsP-Desire,

bring back to me, O Desire, that body

which with insolvable riddles

the Dark Rival is seducing away!

Nikos Engonopoulos