THE THEATRE Poem by ILIAS FOUKIS

THE THEATRE



The one who will play the role
of the one carried on shoulders like a dead man...


Starting tomorrow
when he will have accomplished
a trip of madness and wisdom to Hell
testing whether he can come back or not.



He will play the role
of the winged horseman...



Starting tomorrow having learnt how to shoe horses
he will hear the Reminiscences of those trespassed upon
by the knightly wing-beating
of a dead Empire
and he must then feel accursed for seven full generations...
by the Humanity which heads for its own violation.



The one who will play
the role of King
who looks from his balcony
over the City as he goes to the Slave Market...


Starting tomorrow...the City will ascend to the balconies
and he will go into the market to be sold.


This will be a conservative
change of human positions...
and there under the age-old subjection of those sold
he will perhaps reply to the anguish of all people
with the terse and profound adage:
if you are to be sold
it is better you never enter the World...


The one who will play
the role of Museum architect...



Starting tomorrow will be converted into a Museum plan
and will have the opportunity to explain
just how graceless and irrational
                                                        this Human Race is...
when he will confirm that
despite the fact the testimony on the massacre of centuries
is so vivid...
and indeed still effective
the visitors will leave the Museum
indifferent and not moved at all.



By then all thoughts and Phantoms
so bedraggled and corrupted it couldn’t be worse
have set down like the citizens of Athens
                                                                                    on stone steps
and no one will even try to explain
if this shame of theirs called
Brain Hemorrhage
is a necessary role...
or merely a natural development...!

Translation by PHILIP RAMP