Photographic

Yannis Ritsos

Everyone inside large earthen jars—each one in his own.
They eat, sleep, shit, give birth, die inside the jars.
Sometimes they read an old newspaper—a new one never arrives.
Murdered, murdered—you know—you'd like to murder the jars. Only
a large, rose-colored bra soaking up the sun on the barbed-wire.
Large flies strolling round and round on Beckett’s jar.

June 5, 1968
Partheni concentration camp



from Stones [Collected Poems:I ]