Midday Summer Dream: 2

Yannis Ritsos

LAST NIGHT the children didn't sleep at all. They had placed a number of cicadas in their pencil box, and the cicadas sang from beneath their pillows a song the children knew from long ago but that was forgotten each morning.

Golden frogs, sitting up on their toes and not noticing their shadows on the water, were like tiny statues of solitude and tranquility.

Then the moon tripped on a willow tree and fell into the thick grass.

A great flurry of leaves flew up.

The children ran and picked up the moon in their round hands and all night they played in the fields.

Now their hands are golden, their feet golden, and wherever they step they imprint small moons in the moist soil.

But lucky for them most of the grown ups didn't suspect a thing.

Only mothers were a bit suspicious.

So the children hid their hands, their golden hands, in empty pockets to avoid being scolded by their mothers for secretly playing with the moon all night long.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 341-342]