All Alone

All Alone Editorial note: First published in 1956, reprinted in Poiimata, 1963–1977 (Kastaniotis, 1997). Translated by Karen Van Dyck (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution If you mix rainwater with tearslaughter with suntornado and the wind with rising indignation. If you cry for the children, barefootopen-handed, whose approaching facesglow with late afternoonyou will find yourself all alone. If you turn to the people around youyou will see yourself reflected in their indifferent eyes,desperate, completely alone. And, again, if you choose the high road,implore them to believe in themselves,you will only give them another excuse for bitternessbecause they won't know how, it will be too muchand, again, you will find yourself all alone. If you proclaim your loveit will return, empty, hollow, your same old voicebecause you didn't have the courage to pass by allthe boarded-up doors, worn-out footsteps,muddied streets. The voice you sent out trembling, full of longingwill come back to you with words you never said,words of your loneliness. O God, what will become of us?How will we continue?How will we believe? How will we deceive ourselves?With the strange escape of thingsand souls right next to us? One road exists, one way,one victory only:to believe, become, continueon our own. Translation from the Greek [End Page 37] Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke (1939–2020) studied translation and interpretation at the University of Geneva. She was awarded the First Prize for Poetry of the City of Geneva (1962), the Greek Academy's Poetry Prize (2000), and the Greek National Prize for Literature (2014) and was a finalist for the Neustadt Prize (2008). She attended the International Writing Program at Iowa and was a Fulbright visiting lecturer at Harvard. She published over twenty books of poetry and was an acclaimed translator of Seamus Heaney and Alexander Pushkin, among many others. Karen Van Dyck Karen Van Dyck is the Kimon A. Doukas Professor of Modern Greek Literature at Columbia University. Her translations include Margarita Liberaki's novel Three Summers, shortlisted for the Warwick Women in Translation Prize (2022); the anthology Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry, winner of the London Hellenic Prize (2016); and Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke's The Scattered Papers of Penelope: New and Selected Poems, a Lannan Translation Selection (2009). Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma