Rita Bouma-Pappa: “If I go walking with my dead friends”
Posted: January 5, 2016 Filed under: English, Rita Bouma-Pappa | Tags: Greek women poets Comments Off on Rita Bouma-Pappa: “If I go walking with my dead friends”
Rita Bouma-Pappa (1906-1984)
If I Go Walking with My Dead Friends
.
If I go walking with my dead friends
the city will be flooded with mute girls
the wind with the acrid odour of death
the watchtowers will raise white flags
and cars in the streets will stop
– if I go walking with my dead friends.
.
If I go walking with my dead friends
you will see a thousand girls with bare
pierced chests, shouting at you:
“Why did you send us so soon to sleep
in so much snow, tear-stained and uncombed?”
– if I go walking with my dead friends.
.
If I go walking with my dead friends
the stunned crowds will see
that no airier phalanx ever walked the earth
that no holier litany ever paraded
a resurrection more glorious or more bloody
– if I go walking with my dead friends.
.
If I go walking with my dead friends
the bridal flower of the full moon will rise to adorn them
and orchestras will cry in their hollow eyes,
and the curling locks, their bandages, will flutter;
O many are they who will die then of remorse
– if I go walking with my dead friends.
. . .
Translation from the Greek: Karen Emmerich
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Rita Bouma-Pappa was a well-known literary personality in Greece. An editor of several literary journals, she also wrote more than a dozen volumes of poetry. As a translator, she brought Akhmatova, Brecht, Neruda, Pasternak and Beckett to a Greek readership.
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Zócalo Poets 