.. in the faraway America

Delilah

          Somewhere in the Caribbean,

    The heroine of my youth,
        in the years of innocence and truth,
        was Delilah, the movie star in the West,
        where my imagination had the best nest
        in the faraway America, in the new world ..

        My memories spread out from a state furled
        as a sail or a flag unfold,
        leading me to a book that never outsold,
        the book of my adventurous life, 
                                          [the miserable,
        a life that I would describe as invisible..

            _______________


The oil tanker* anchored somewhere 
                                           [in the Caribbean,
on an island similar to those of the Aegean,
and I, a lowly sailor, a plebeian,
I saw Helen of Sparta, the legend Mycenaean,
a beauty who said to me "hello European ..

She looked as goddess of the ancient Achaean,*
was she Delilah? the goddess of my youth?
she was exactly alike, and that’s the truth ...

     But alas, those two words, the European and hello,
     were the only words she knew, and snow
     covered her tropical island and my heart.

     I will not be able to tell her, again in this second part,
     that I love her, and will always love her….     "Start...."
     (heard the order)   ".... heave the aaanchor…"


     She whispered something in her language......
                                        [while, was moving away the tanker….

ps:

     We all live in a tower of Babel,*
     a half-bewildered rabble,
     where we are able,
     even love to make unstable,
     sometimes lost in the translation,
     or in the laws for immigration.
     ______________________

* Extract from "The Broken Mooring Line", an experiential
poetic work // page c14 // e-mail: pmataragas@yahoo.com //
Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS

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* An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a merchant ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed   to move refined products from refineries to points near consuming markets


* The Tower of Babel forms the focus of a story told in the Book of Genesis of the Bible. According to the story, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar. As the King James version of the Bible puts it:
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.—Genesis 11:4
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The Tales of a Greek Sailor