Without Counterweight

Yannis Ritsos

Yuck!—he said—disgusting. He closed his ears, his nostrils, his eyes.
What? What do you hear? What do you see? Seven bullets, eight bullets.
Even the murderers murdered, and other similar things
here and there. Toward what will you turn? What will you offer instead?
All the flags torn into strips through time
and not one on a balcony overhead will be lowered to half-mast.
Old newspapers drift on the water, right beside the drowning victim.

June 5, 1968
Partheni concentration camp



from Stones [Collected Poems:I ]