Unanswered

Yannis Ritsos

Where are you taking me? Where does this road lead? Tell me.
I can’t see a thing. This isn’t a road at all. Only stones.
Black girders. A streetlight. If only I had
that cage—not the kind for birds, but rather one
with heavier wire, with naked statues. When
they cast the dead down from that flat roof, I didn’t say anything,
I gathered up those statues—I felt sorry for them. Now I know:
the last thing to die is the body. So speak to me.
Where are you taking me? I can’t see a thing. It’s best I don’t see.
The greatest obstacle to thinking through to the end, is glory.

May 19, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]