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Maria Lampadaridou Pothou

poet novelist playwright

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In our Times of Betrayal

Στους προδομένους καιρούς μας
  • Publisher: Greek Book
  • Published: 1st November 1975

These poems were written during the difficult years of the junta, living in fear as if we were inside one of Kafka's novels with the nightmarish guilt of silence. Through strange associations, that fear and the strange guilt awakened the old terror that I experienced as a child during the Nazi occupation, awakening the guilt of innocence. The poems in this collection are a cry of complaint about those perilous times.

 

An act of life
This time of bleeding
An act of life
This last Nay

Songs are not enough
To declare
Our face
They are not enough
To denounce our times

 

Mother's song

A saddle bag full of moon for your freedom
A springtime for love

 

Who writes on a moonlight
upon naked bones
our history!

A mother searching for torn
crosses

A little further a little
in a crying distance
in a springtime distance
the mass execution
Sleep my dear
sleep my angel

A little further a little
in a landscape with a full moon
the mass grave
in a landscape of brotherly murder
Sleep my star
Sleep my precious

Don't step there
Your first steps should not be taken
over there
It is the earth that covers
death in bloom
It is the execution by distance
of guilt

Where can you stand
Where can you take your first steps where?
All around the traps are set
Sleep my dear
sleep my angel!

 


Series: poetry

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