Helen (After Euripides)

By Panagiota Zikou

When I cast my gaze upon the stars and seas,

a curse, a darkened day awakens,

just beyond the breath of the northern wind.

And the sudden bitter smile dissolves

into aching visions, fleeting glances —

for the eye beholds a hated, ill-fated face,

and silence hastens to bury the mind

in thoughts of death.

Dead hopes stretch across the horizon,

beneath the dying glow

of a radiant, Luciferian sun.

Gods — mingled and merciless foes —

praise that shadowed day

for the cruelty that creeps within its shade.

World builds, and world destroys.

And when proud soldiers fell,

like precious apparitions                                                                                                                              they turned into ash

before the so-called righteous lords of fate —

those divine arbiters,

the burdens too heavy

for the narrow gates of my conscience.

Withered flowers — eyes that bled once,

and bleed a thousandfold again within the heart.

Fragrant blooms, roses red with death,

mirroring the heavens,

forming a mourning sky

above my soul.

Fallen flowers, beneath a springtime sun,

too weary from a futile war —

memories eternal

of the other self I once became.

And when, a decade hence,

those flowers bloom once more

before the newborn sun,

they shall drip with poison

until the earth I tread turns to stone.

A frozen, lyrical image I bear —

an endless grief —

as my last glance hovers

above the noose of my own thought.

Final tones of sorrow carve themselves

in sudden tears

that slide down the tender cheek

and give it shade,

a fleeting shadow that softens as it fades.

When I behold a brighter, nobler world,

the mind knows — the heart babbles

its final murmurs,

and the dream stammers softly

before the illusions of my vanished life.

And when I awaken among the ruins — suddenly —

it is gone.

Wealth is gone,

and the golden adornments,

the treasured jewels that deceived forgotten dreams.

Only need remains —

the gentle flutter of angels’ wings,

where even the wolves fall silent

before the naked voice of night.

As the poor make feast of their misfortune,

and faded suns, stripped bare of grace,

leave despair behind

to hum softly and to sing:

the greatest power of all is need.

By Panagiota Zikou