The Sun has set and the stars are slowly flickering.
on the other side of the sky, high above the moon,
The night slowly spreads and the shutters close.
We lit a fire in the fireplace and sleep will take us.
Winterize for good with December snow
and the barley coffee was roasted in the oven,
In the corner, the blind grandfather, with a sly smile, finds
He looks, gazing into space, for the deaf man's cloak.
He learned to go where he wants without eyes
walking in the dark with a small cane,
never ask for help, not even on the stairs
while grandma continued knitting the jeepney.
He lost his light late in middle age.
The war found him sick and crippled,
with a sword that was left over from the Turk's fury
and the scars on his body, most of them on his back…..
He sat motionless in the corner for hours.
with a glass he was cleaning a bunch of reeds,
remembered the war in wild foreign lands
and the many groves on the riverbanks...
He told me many stories from those places.
where war broke out for two pieces of land,
where the rifles were firing hidden among the hides
and they marked the enemy face down on the ground.
Grandpa told me many strange stories.
from the familiar places that were all ours,
centuries and thousands of testimonies said so
and many of our children are buried there everywhere.
With his sword he returned crippled to the island
to heal the many wounds the body had
and maybe for a while he will forget and stop hating
those who persecuted him unjustly.
Years passed, he hid in the deep darkness
without the eyes he lost to see any other light,
to walk in the open spaces from morning till night
very blind and sometimes deaf.
With a rod always in hand to hold
to fall, to get up and to smile,
and slowly go where he wants to go
and let not even its darkness ever spoil it.
He sang songs to me from Asia Minor
but also some miscellaneous things from America,
the first of war and despair
the others from his father who returned from there.
For twelve hours he stood next to me in bed
the days when I was sick and had a fever,
he talked and sang without blinking an eye
with beautiful fairy tales from the old days.
I'm old now, the years have passed.
But I never forget my handsome grandfather,
It will remain like this in the heart even if it grows old.
to remind me of the good demon of myself.
KOSTAS KATECHIS KANATAS
MARCOS' GRANDSON KATECHI KANATA
DECEMBER / 31/ 2025
new York
photo NoName_13, https://pixabay.com
