Haunted ship, no one had approached it.
Half a century stranded on the sand.
It was my misfortune to discover the treasure.
In the third locker on the bridge
I found your words, Nikos.
In a notebook soaked with urine.
Rusty, but alive, sealed with a stamp of rum.
They had a sadness within them.
They bore the merciless languor of exile.
They wrote with salt what people didn't say.
Verses jumbled on abandoned cigarette packs,
lyrics that considered the crackling of the radio on the lost frequencies to music,
Verses that you reverently placed on the ocean's bedside table.
Poetry, you said, smells salty.
The sea, I said, washes up poetry.
I didn't light a candle.
I only read your verses aloud on the deck,
to a mermaid who dived into the waters of nostalgia.
Whatever rusts, you say, dies —
but your lyrics sparkle,
like a new knife blade.
Fifty years and still the sailors
They steal you from the waves and throw you into their glasses every time they reach port.
photo Atlantis, https://pixabay.com
