Three Poems after Yannis Ritsos

REVERSALS There are graves under the houses and houses under the graves and linking the three a broad stone staircase where the dead go up and the living go down. They pass one another wordlessly which might mean they don’t know, or else they’re pretending not to know. You can smell the orange grove on the hill; you can hear children bowling barrel hoops down the street. Two women gossip as they fill their jug at the spring. Their secrets cloud the water. Later they walk back through an avenue of   cypresses, carrying the jug like a bastard child. TRAPPED In the house across the street, in a room directly opposite his, was a long mirror. When he looked out of   his window, he would see himself   in the room like a thief caught in a trap. He threw a stone. His neighbor ran in to the sound of   breaking glass, then came to the window and shouted across: “Thank God for that: whenever I looked in my mirror there you were, doing something shifty behind my back.” The first man turned away. The long mirror in his room brought him face to face with his neighbor, knife in hand. THE ACCUSED Just as he locked the door, as he pocketed the key, as he glanced over his shoulder, they arrested him. They tortured him until they tired of   it. “Look,” they said, “the key is your key, the house is your house, we accept that now; but why did you put the key in your pocket as if to hide it from us?” They let him go, but his name is still on a list.