Unexpectedly I set out to draw a circle
Round a piece of chalk
With a scraping’s shavings to be laid out
The paring of slowness
And stillness
And the line
And the line becoming a circle by itself
In contact with the ground
The chalk in the middle
The chalk a timeless moment
Chivalrous meditation
And straightforwardness

And in time it leaves an imprint
Like a downy blessing
When the wind blows it
A centimetre aside
Whereby a successive circle is created
And afterwards air or wind
Or whatever
Is again transposition
Again a successive circle
Round another piece of chalk
And eventually the piece of chalk
Becomes a fairway
And a hand takes it high by the nose
And brings it to the ground
And cauterizes it in black
And the white more vivid

And then it creates an entire human circle
And a shirt’s check passages
And no one wants to walk
On parapets laid out in a circle
Simply without beginning
And without end

Some daring fellow aims inward
Some timid one wallows in the outward ⎯
Outline
Someone dead
Is well-nigh pleased
He finds enough space in there to squeeze
His body
To imply the way of initiative
Or suicide
To make the security scenarios easier to digest
And always dead and alone he finds
The flow in the circle of life and death
Without ceased full stops of bleeding
And then a moment later
The wind
Or death
Or the murderer
And the circle’s centre alters
And the manner of suicide changes
And a moment after
The circle enlarges
Becomes bulky ⎯ three-dimensional
It’s called earth
And many the corpses ⎯ man
And outside a piece of chalk is making a wreath
Atmosphere separating it from the gloom
Of chaos
And the star’s
Hooked safeguard
Surrounds the tops of mountains
And the depths of valleys
And volcanoes
And everyone is satisfied
Till some God with an arrow
Creates an iron attraction
Of normality
Called axis
Round which the sun will turn
With a chivalrous pulse
And eternal
No beginning and no end on the same
Maypole of life and romance
Death’s roundness leaves
A dull sound in the body
And around whiteness
And around earth
And nothing
A half outline of thought

*Το ποίημα προέρχεται από τη συλλογή “ακρογωνιαία πορεία στο και”, εκδόσεις ΣΑΙΞΠΗΡΙΚόΝ, Θεσσαλονίκη 2012. Μετάφραση στην Αγγλική: Γιάννης Γκούμας.