Introduction

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."  – Paul Valery 

May this afternoon's feeble shadows fall upon all the heady lines of my poetry, or may heaps of dry leaves blaze up in flames beside them today. On return, the hunter will see nothing but ashes flying to and fro.

How much of truth ever comes up near pleasure? I tell those driven out of a pilgrimage that all I've wished is to stuff the broken violin with all my sins.

May those birds, too, come back now, those that flew from the groves of mouri-flowers towards the sea.

On a terribly quiet night, you've known, especially after every kiss, that the weight of this foggy existence becomes a little lighter. Crested cocks and lyres – these were our last assets. Why do you hide away when the maddening rush of zebras starts! Should you wait a little, you'll see how a lonely drop of dew dissolves into the earth slowly, falling down the trunk of any of the tall trees lined along the edge of a path strewn with dead leaves and dead flowers on a morning.

See more, a few unknown birds often come up to roost among our olive trees, the birds I mistake for philosophers of a millennium before or after.