Nasos Vayenas
INCIDENT

All night it rained. And in the morning
the trucks drove by with muddy tyres.
The dead remove to other bodies
leaving deep gouges on the skin.
The sky quickly turns blue.
A flaming sun
shoots whistling over my head.
“Death's but a little thing”
a taxi driver said to me last week.
“A simple power cut - as though
you had neglected to settle your bill.”

From Biography (1978)
Translated from the Greek by John Stathatos 
Translation © John Stathatos, 1979, 2006
From Nassos Vayenas: Biography & Other Poems , Oxus Press,
London 1979. Revised 2006.
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