Hours Of Idleness

Hours of Idleness by Vassilis Polyzos Ms Fortune the queen of the pirates In the year of the erotic heliotrope Turns on and off her parasol Her fan Her eyelids The zip of her trousers Gliding with incredible elegance Contre lumiére On the ice-rink Down and up the metro escalators Astride the rainbow In the chamber of mirrors Schönbrunn 1997. Those were the days, dear Christ Holy child of Prague Piano and Latin lessons in the garden For sweet little Sissy Her crinoline caught in the rose-bushes Between her legs a Mozart twelve years old Dressed as a Hapsburgs admiral And the Emperor Franz Josef gone a-hunting The wild boar. Rome is floating Ethereal In bowls of pink alabaster. The other day in the Via Condotti Teressa Guiccioli bought me Two mila schön neckties with a blue border And motifs of tiny honey-coloured rhombi She rather wanted them herself For playing the naked odalisk on the divan With my tie crawling lazily on her bush. Tesoro mio, she whispered After it stopped raining My garters Have left purple blotches on your sides. Βασίλης Πολύζος, Ηλιακό Ποδήλατο, «ώρες τεμπελιάς». Translated from the Greek by the author