Useful antique

Within the light

a marble statue standing by
A child’s archaic smile
No thoughts about truth or lie.

 

Be nice, good, coherent,

Lie don’t tell

The ten commandments look at.

 

In the chapel’s apex

Ascending by proper devices
Angels and Madonnas drawing
Guilty made to feeling.

 

With honour to Thermopiles
Those who fell and monuments
Pausing a little with admiration

For the hero in panoply.

 

In the round market now

The hero’s twisting
Magicians are around
Languages buying and selling.

 

It’s odd to stay out
Language without
The game without you
Bad trade without you.

 

The panoply is of no use
The arrow found Achilles’ heel
Not the name of this game
A funny castle is your build.

 

How many statues didn’t fall
Amid this modern maelstrom?
How many museums aren’t filled
With so fine sorrow indeed?

Leave the market

And when here and there you they take
If something useful you wish to be
Show that smile which is not
Supposed to know
About virtue and malice
And Troy in a state of siege.

 

(απόδοση στα αγγλικά ενός ποιητικού που είχαμε δημοσιεύσει το 2002, 11/2011, Δ. Κιούκιας)