Cats and angry young men

from The Window

Around her, the rotten rinds of squeezed lemons shine like small suns;
a little cretonne curtain, drawn back at an angle on a low window,
is like a dog-eared page of a beloved book
to remind you to return at some future time to reread it.
So there is no humiliation where life wants to live,
where dogs search the rubbish heap with polite movements,
and young girls hold high their unlined foreheads loaded with their robust hair,
as if they are carrying a black jug of silent water,
in fear lest they drop it. I have seen many young girls
in this posture, yes, on that very street,
and dark-complexioned hairy young men with fleshy mouths,
always angry (as the very sad are)
because they did not manage to become as vulgar as they should have liked,
and this is why they keep cursing more and more, louder and louder. If you observe carefully
you will understand. Their voices are
broad palms caressing the ship’s black cat
seated warily on their knees—at nighttime naturally,
and neither their hands nor the cat is visible. Only the cat’s eyes phosphoresce
like two side-lights on a ship coasting along a flowery isle.

—Yannis Ritsos, The Fourth Dimension, trans. Rae Dalven (David R. Godine, 1977)

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