THE BRIDGE OF ARTA

  Forty-five masons and sixty apprentices guided by their master builder assemble a bridge with distended veins, whose foundations collapse every night.Life means mostly waiting for life.A bird with a human voice informs the master builder that for the bridge to remain standing he must immure his beautiful wife.Love is a stone under dark water.As she is being buried alive in one of the piers to yoke together slippery foundations, the master builder’s wife curses the bridge to flutter, those who cross it, to fall like leaves.There are blanks in any life but tonight the bars are full, there are bodies in the world, mountains with long blue walls, rivers meandering and she doesn’t want it to be over yet.Only when reminded of her brother abroad who might cross the bridge himself, does she change her curses into blessings.How does it happen, the giving up.One must learn to live in language.Use your head, she says to herself.Use your head.As the tall mountains tremble, so shall the bridge tremble and as the birds of prey fall so shall passers by, she cries out.Blood pressure is expressed in units of millimeters of mercuryThe sun through cement, a mass of pale yellow lemons under the sea.Life is there to be wastedNo one knows the name of anything. ____Fani Papageorgiou is a writer and book reviewer living in London. Her latest book , Not So Ill With You and Me, has just been published.