Yannis Ritsos
WE HAD made a cart out of a walnut shell. We used a spool for wheels. We harnessed up two ants and heaped it full of clover. Please don't tell anyone where we are going.
The echo in the well listens and the caves repeat the sound our voices.
The sun burns the stone and a number of smokestacks send up plumes from the white cities of chamomile.
Wagtails steal our straw hats and wear them.
Now seated on the highest balcony of our mulberry tree they make fun of us. And we make fun of the wagtails.
We enter the whitewashed pen that is filled with weeds and a wooden cross, and we look for wild violets to braid into a crown for the girls' hair.
The road from here to there is straight, and the mule drivers sing grape harvesting songs under the immense midday heat of the sun.
from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 343]
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