I speak of the last trumpet calls of the defeated soldiers
Of the rags from our holiday clothes
Of our children, selling cigarettes to passers-by
I speak of the flowers that have wilted on the graves and are rotting under the rain
Of the houses that gape, windowless, like toothless skulls
Of the girls begging, showing the wounds on their breasts
Of the barefoot mothers crawling in the debris
Of the flaming cities, the corpses piling in the streets
The pimp poets, trembling in thresholds at night
I speak of the endless nights when the light is lessened at dawn
Of the loaded tracks and the steps on wet cobblestone
I speak of the prison yards and the tears of those condemned to death.
In the cellar of the tavern
surrounded by smoke and swearing
(the music barrel screeching upstairs)
our whole crew was drinking yesterday.
Yesterday, like every night,
so the poison could be swallowed.
The word of Demosthenes
Even if I were to get out of this prison, no one will be waiting for me.
The streets will be empty and my city more foreign.
The coffee shops will all be closed, and my friends will all have gone abroad.
The wind will be blowing me away, even if I were to get out of this prison.
And the sun will go to sleep on the ruins of Olynthos
my friends and my enemies will look like mythical things
The rhetors and the crooks will stand frozen
beggars, concubines and prophets will stand frozen
I will stand in front of the gate, blankets under my armpit
and moving my head slowly, I shall greet the guard.
Without will, without God, like a king in an ancient drama
I will say the word and the letter; I will stand in front of the gate.
Music, Lyrics: Dionysis Savopoulos. From the album Dirty Bread, 1972.
Vietnam, yeah, yeah
In Vietnam, they 've set the rice on fire, they 've set the rice on fire.
In Saigon, you could not live
the air was not enough to live on.
Now, hidden in the river, you breathe
Fo Minh Chi, you breathe
through a straw, through a straw.
Yeah, yeah, yeah....
The weather would have been beautiful in the forest,
would have been beautiful in the forest
if leaves did not go deaf from the explosions
if the sun didn't freeze from the terror
Hey!
if the children did not eat garbage
if the rain did not set huts to fire
the weather would have been beautiful in the forest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Fo Minh Chi, what would you really do.
what would you really do,
if the children did not eat garbage,
if the rain didn't set huts to fire?
Ah!
You would take your girl for a stroll,
holding hands, Fo Minh Chi,
you 'd stroll in the forest holding hands.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Music, Lyrics: Dionysis Savopoulos. From the album Truck, 1966.
Our old friends
Don't tell me, our old friends -- don't tell me --
have gone forever.
Don't! I've learned it by now
the old books, the old songs
have gone forever.
The days that hurt us have gone
the days that hurt us have become
toys in children's hands.
Life changes without caring about your melancholy.
The time comes when you must decide whose side are you on
and who you stand against.
The old ideas, the old loves, the screams
are gone forever
they have become toys in children's hands.
This moment is beautiful. Should I say it again?
It is beautiful. Let me speak to you.
I see fires in ports, in stations
and I am with you.
When our world burns,
when the bridges behind us are cut off,
I will be there
to remind you
of the old days.
Music, Lyrics: Dionysis Savopoulos. From the album Truck. 1966.
What use are your songs?
What use are your songs?
They never tell the truth.
The people suffer and go hungry
and you keep on with the same fairytales.
What use are your songs?
They are too sugary
they are fit for candy-fed kids
but not for me.
Lyrics: Dinos Christianopoulos
Music: Dionysis Savopoulos
From the album Ten years of songs, 1975.
The factory, the factory it never stops
night and day it works
and what is the name of the man next to me
or of that crazy Italian?
I can't ask them
nor can I breathe.
I could, of course, stand first
amidst the armed Dorians,
dressed in their much admired garb
like him who posed in a museum
frozen in place -- reminiscent of glorious waterfalls--
I could, of course,
and not by chance.
I, Bertolt Brecht, come from the black forests.
My mother carried me into the cities
As I lay in her body. And the cold of the forests
Will be in me till I die.
In the asphalt city I am at home. Right from the first
Supplied with every last rite:
With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy.
Yannis Ritsos's calendar, week of the Polytechnic uprising and junta repression, 16-22 November 1973
17 November
Heavy silence, punctured by shots, bitter city,
blood, fire, the fallen door, the smoke, the vinegar
Who will say I am waiting from the interior darkness.
Little rope-walkers with big shoes and a bandage of fire on the forehead
red wire, red bird, the lonely dog in the isolated suburbs,
as the palest day dawns behind the smoke-painted statues
and the last scream is heard, dissolved on the avenues
behind the tanks, inside the scattered shots.
So how can you sleep? How can you then sleep?
22 November
How slowly the knife grows. He who is silent,
it isn't that he has nothing to say
it isn't the twelve nails on the wall, the locust in the glass
it is that he is waiting for his jaws to unclench.
Who is it that my life hunts
wishing to prey upon it in the night?
Trucks scream and whistle
I' m caught like fish in the net.
For someone in the world it is too late
who is it that my life, that my life hunts?
Who lies in ambush for my life?
Who is it who takes aim at the alleys of the world?
Where is the one who knows how to speak
who knows, even more, how to believe?
It was still a long time
It was still a long time before the dawn.
But I did not admit defeat.
I could see now how many hidden keepsakes I had to salvage
how many nests of water I had to preserve within the flames.
You talk, you show your wounds on the street, beside yourselves
you plant the panic that is strangling your heart on balconies,
as if it were a flag; you have studiously loaded the commodities,
your prediction is safe: The city will fall.
