Today as April 21, 1970

Who will calculate for us the cost of our decision to forget?
--George Seferis

For the past
three years, she's been at it,
nagging as I descend
the steps into the garden, bent
over, bringing the sky with me:
Elias, where's the sun? You forgot
the sun again. You know how
we depend on you.

Hag. How she stumbles
in her garden, blistering her knees
against the rocks, while I sit here,
idle, and think about it:
"You know how we depend on you..."

I should have been an owl in daylight
or a marble face dumb in the night.

It would have been easier then,
hating her.

(From Sentences, 1976)

NB: Today is the 36th anniversary of the fall of the repressive, brutal and despicable Greek junta which seized power on April 21, 1967; true to form, the US was one of the first countries--perhaps the first--to recognize the dictators.