MY DEAREST MOTHER
AGNES
SOTIRACOPOULOU-SKINA
My ages are full of you
Of your dear, sweet
face,
My ears enchanted by
your voice,
Whenever I should go
For so long as I live,
you are always with me;
More now than when you
were still alive–
Nevertheless this
terrible emptiness O my God:
Your incorporeal
presence tortures me,
Annihilates me, each
time
It waned to leave me a
wreck.
Ah; this solitude
How unlike any other,
And I, who believed
That I had known every
loneliness ....
–Translated from French
by Hugh McKinley