The village was a hard place--a few white squares against the mountain. No wells, no streams, a taste of cisterns on the widow's lips who had brought him food--white cheese, hard gray bread, black olives. She watched him eat and told him to stay for the cool hours of evening and the morning that would come alive like the light moving along her lips now.
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.