Secret Ritual, and: A Sick Man's Reward, and: Disturbance

; O MINNESO TA RE VIE W WILLIAM HOAGLAND MY FATHER'S PHONE CALLS Drunk, worried about the brood, He cautions, long distance, Of storms in his county, not mine. You've married too soon, he says, We could be fishing somewhere, Catching big ones, and getting drunk. But I remember he caught them all One morning, emptying an ice chest Of beer, filling it with catfish, Falling on the rain-slick bank. And now this drunken call, cut off. Somewhere between us the lines are down, And storms meander the state. YANNIS RITSOS SECRET RITUAL Her footsteps echoed. They announced her presence. Like her hands. She had thought of saying something else, but couldn't. But it was even worse just saying that. So that finally, unseen, naked, She stood before the yawning doorway And with terse, interrupted movements, like any housewife, She brushed an old coat she would never wear. RITSOS 11 A SICK MAN'S REWARD A smell of humid, rotten planks all through the day, drying and smoking on the blatant sun. Some birds gaze from a roof and in an instant fly away. In a neighborhood taverna, in the evening, the grave-diggers gather. They eat fried foods. They drink. They sing a song full of grim gaps, and through those gaps, a quiet wind begins to blow; and the leaves, the lamps, the papers on the shelves begin to tremble. DISTURBANCE Soldiers with large dirty feet, mingle with their blankets, with their breath, with the rancid air, just as a secretive moon rises and as bullets burst below by the slaughter-house—; "Thanasi! Thanasi!", shout the women behind the shutters. No one turns to look—lost names, lost consciences; dogs roll the clay-jugs on the road; drums of steel tumble from the hills. "Thanasi! Thanasi!", and a cluster of leaflets burst from the blindman's hat as he tries to protect his violin under his coat. Translated by Minas Sawas ...