Eleni Tsaligopoulou / Ελένη Τσαλιγοπούλου

I cut my words in half
so that perhaps they will bear the loneliness
I want to say my pain
I close my eyes, look
That we may travel like birds
I want to say my pain

If you love me, stop the seas
if you love me, walk on the clouds

I cut my words in half
so that perhaps they will bear the emptiness
I want to say my pain
I close my eyes if you like
That the bodies only will rise as the sun
I want to say my pain

If you love me. . .

(translation: Eva Johanos)

The world was small, big were his dreams
They couldn’t fit into his sleep, nor in his embrace.

And neither did he ever understand that, here the wild beast
Inside him, how it grew, or how long it would stay.

From the wounds of his soul the beast finds its food
And at the sources of love it slakes its thirst.

And if it feels the touch of the world it hides, frightened,
In the world by itself, among other beasts a stranger.

The world was small, big were his dreams
They couldn’t fit into his sleep, nor in his embrace.

Time gives nourishment to the beast and it grows bigger
It became his other self, no one believed it.

He no longer has a heart, dreams he no longer has
A beast himself he became, in order to withstand the world

And if he feels the touch of the world he hides, frightened,
In the world by himself, among other beasts a stranger.

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Κι αν νιώσει ανθρώπου άγγιγμα,τραβιέται φοβισμένος
Μέσα στον κόσμο μοναχός και μες στα αγρίμια ξένος

I saw somewhere in the uproar
my old love
so many storms there
so many forest fires

How can the wound close
how can the thorn get out
why did we find, why,
so many false reasons

I will always be here
to guard what you threw away
I do not forgive you
for all the fires you forgot.
I will always be here
in spite of all the years that passed
I do not forgive us
it was through fear that we lost.

At the station underground
an illusion of the eye
in the crowd, the mute crowd,
that too was lost

We did not realise it
how love comes late
we did not manage to see
our end as a beginning.

I will always be here
to guard what you threw away
I do not forgive you
for all the fires you forgot.
I will always be here
in spite of all the years that passed
I do not forgive us
it was through fear that we lost.

I love you
I love you because you are beautiful
I love you because you are beautiful
I love you because you are you

I love
I love the whole world
I love the whole world
because you are alive within it

You win-
your window which is closed
your window which is closed
your window which is shut

Open
open one pane of it
open one pane of it
let me see your image