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Costas Varnalis

The Song of the Thrush

HRUSH, they called little Anna at the village. And she lived and died a thrush. She was a tiny little girl. Thin, with long legs, weightless, like a bird. She wasn’t walking – she was hopping around and running.

But what is the village we speak of?

         One of those mountainous ones, perched on the mountain slope and they all look alike. Beautiful, but poor and depressing, abandoned by gods and men all the same.

         A glen downhill with its red oleander and a goats’ path, which leads through the pine tree forest to the top of the mountain. It was such an isolated, forsaken village, that it too had forgotten its name.

         It didn’t need one, as if it was a burden.

         But what these villages lack of culture, care and fill…