I hide behind simple things so you’ll find me,

if you don’t find me, you’ll find the things,

you’ll touch what my hand has touched,

our hand prints will merge.

 

The August moon glitters in the kitchen

like a tin-plated pot (it gets that way

because of what I’m saying to you),

it lights up the empty house and

the house’s kneeling silence–

always the silence remains kneeling.

 

Every word is a doorway

to a meeting, one often cancelled,

and that’s when a word is true:

when it insists on the meeting.

–Yannis Ritsos, Greece