Hours of Idleness by Vassilis Polyzos

Ms Fortune the queen of the pirates
In the year of the erotic heliotrope
Turns on and off her parasol
Her fan
Her eyelids
The zip of her trousers
Gliding with incredible elegance
Contre lumiére
On the ice-rink
Down and up the metro escalators
Astride the rainbow
In the chamber of mirrors Schönbrunn 1997.

Those were the days, dear Christ
Holy child of Prague
Piano and Latin lessons in the garden
For sweet little Sissy
Her crinoline caught in the rose-bushes
Between her legs a Mozart twelve years old
Dressed as a Hapsburgs admiral
And the Emperor Franz Josef gone a-hunting
The wild boar.

Rome is floating
Ethereal
In bowls of pink alabaster.
The other day in the Via Condotti
Teressa Guiccioli bought me
Two mila schön neckties with a blue border
And motifs of tiny honey-coloured rhombi
She rather wanted them herself
For playing the naked odalisk on the divan
With my tie crawling lazily on her bush.

Tesoro mio, she whispered
After it stopped raining

My garters

Have left purple blotches on your sides.

Βασίλης Πολύζος, Ηλιακό Ποδήλατο, «ώρες τεμπελιάς».
Translated from the Greek by the author