Poems
The recipient of the 1985 Greek National Poetry Award for the Greek version of Beings and Things on Their Own, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke is the author of seven previous books of poetry in Greek.
Twilight
Darkness slowly eats the light, like a worm the fruit: from within. First the presaging shadows fall, then the hen seeks out yesterday’s branch to roost. In her tiny brain she thinks her life will go on forever. A rustling accompanies the visible world as it leaves through the door of twilight and, invisible now, will soon go back in through the same door which we will then call night. On completion of the cycle, on the hidden side of the moon, on the other side of “I know,” perhaps the scarecrow which petrifies me now will turn into a butterfly, and ugly sticks into the limbs of Adonis. And will Death, with his hunt- ing cap and gun, start missing his target among the flowers?
I am politically minded. I mean, I think about death daily and compare it with a vastly better system: life.
