The Annihilation of Melos

FIRST WOMAN: A chill seems to have set in. The summer is late.
The church clock is chiming.
SECOND WOMAN: It chimed twelve. Midnight. Hush-they will
hear us inside.
ALL THREE: Let’s sit right here, huddled together, so we can
feel the fresh air.
THIRD WOMAN: lsn’ t it strange
that the clock chimes and we count from the beginning-two,
three, five, nine,
FIRST WOMAN: that it chimes and we listen-strange. And are
we the ones speaking?
ALL THREE: are we the ones moving our lips, we who have been
dead for years, we women of Melos?
SECOND WOMAN: we are opening our mouths-and is sound
coming out? -and are we hearing it?
ALL THREE: Did Melos exist, did we too exist, and do we have
hands
and are we moving our hands and remembering? -do the
dead remember?
FIRST WOMAN: and do they converse and blink their eyelids?
ALL THREE: Do you think we have been asleep
for years and years, and we saw these things in our sleep,
and sleep is taking them back?
Our island was small (it was a place-not memories and
dreams) , it was an island
as small as a finger-ring;-there were many things we didn’t
have, many things we didn’t know;

Yannis Ritsos, The Annihilation of Melos
Translated by Rick M. Newton