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Ritsos, Yiannis – Selected Poems - The Potter
Identifier
029415
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
From Selected Poems, tr. N. Stangos (1974)
The Potter
One day he finished with the pitchers, the flower pots, the cook-
ing pots. Some clay
was left over. He made a woman. Her breasts
were big and firm. His mind wandered. He returned home late.
His wife grumbled. He didn't answer her. Next day
he kept more clay and even more the following day.
He wouldn't go back home. His wife left him.
His eyes burn. He's half-naked. He wears a red waist-band.
He lies all night with clay women. At dawn
you can hear him sing behind the fence of the workshop.
He took off his red waist-band too. Naked. Completely naked.
And all around him
the empty pitchers, the empty cooking pots, the empty flower
pots
and the beautiful, blind, deaf-and-dumb women with the bitten
breasts.