Elena

“Μας έλεγαν θα νικήσετε όταν υποταχτείτε.
Υποταχτήκαμε και βρήκαμε τη στάχτη.
Μας έλεγαν θα νικήσετε όταν αγαπήσετε.
Αγαπήσαμε και βρήκαμε τη στάχτη.
Μας έλεγαν θα νικήσετε όταν εγκαταλείψετε τη ζωή σας.
Εγκαταλείψαμε τη ζωή μας και βρήκαμε τη στάχτη...
Βρήκαμε τη στάχτη. Μένει να ξαναβρούμε τη ζωή μας, τώρα που δεν έχουμε πια τίποτα. Φαντάζομαι εκείνος που θα ξαναβρεί τη ζωή, έξω από τόσα χαρτιά, τόσα συναισθήματα, τόσες διαμάχες και τόσες διδασκαλίες, θα είναι κάποιος σαν εμάς, μόνο λιγάκι πιο σκληρός στη μνήμη.”
― Γιώργος Σεφέρης, Τετράδιο γυμνασμάτων: 1928-1937

“When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.”
― Samuel Beckett

“I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.”
― Pablo Neruda

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath