November Dusk from my Rooftop in Xanthi, Greece

Up here, no noise is disturbing enough.
Car honks, TVs, baby cries and giggles
all dissolve behind my head.
I reach the edge and stand to gaze around, but not beneath me,
arrogantly, like an ancient god
untouched by common drama.

No scents reach me here either.
All life is trapped on the ground floor.
The neighbors’ fried meatballs and anchovies do not taunt me.
No holding my breath from car exhaust,
no stench from trash cans left for three days straight due to strikes.
Only smoke passes me by, occasionally,
from chimneys and Sunday barbecues on adjacent balconies.

I guess no style counts up here either, no aesthetic choice.
All I see, the heads of bleached faceless paper boxes in a row.
Could one of them ever become bold enough
to break the pattern?

The rooftops, they are kind of a mess,
stranded at the end of my talons,
an outdated network, tarnished,
a ball of entangled spider webs and old fat wires.

If you look closer, you’ll see them shyly leaning on each other
as if to keep their residents inside warm, as if
to keep out the November breeze.
Even the sun is running off to escape it,
behind the mountains, where there is good hiding.

I swear, at times those dark rocky slopes
around the valley form a gigantic nest
of thorns, tangled with paper and waste.

Lydia Makri is an undergraduate student in the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Apart from poetry, she displays a passion for the arts in general, especially cinema and literature, and she hopes to find ways to make the most out of her interests after graduating.