DROSS OF IMMORTALITY Poem by Nikos Karouzos

I always climb towards horror with greasy boots,
starving now from flame
fluently secular
fluently in tears
eternal chorographer of my diction
and unquestioned garment.
Badly spent illumination in mauve and other delays,
of an ignoble horizon
barking the creed of the dog, or an unbecoming
hallucinatory Universe,
pharaonic queen through mathematical piousness.
I am what's involuntary of existence
my physique is not a flower, it is rawness,
I am disposed toward a thousand years even if I fall
eternally on bloody seconds;
the winds have pointed me out.

May 1989