Demos Moutsis

You are not saying a word,
you keep hidden secrets and documents
and I hear only
the metallic signals of the microphones

I know your name
your image and again from the beginning,
I am looking for an exit, searching
for a different life

The nights are passing by,
the seconds move heavily on the minute hands
asking for something
that does not turn into scream and illusion

I know your name
your image and again from the beginning,
I am looking for an exit, searching
for a different life

In the loneliness
of the kilometers and in the silence of the chronometers
now you can hear
sirens, transports and ambulances

I know your name
your image and again from the beginning,
I am looking for an exit, searching
for a different life

Ξέρω τ’ όνομά σου
την εικόνα σου και πάλι από την αρχή
ψάχνω για μια διέξοδο γυρεύοντας
μια αλλιώτικη ζωή…

I shall bring you violins, and a sweet little drum, to play for you,
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear.

Between us, as you see, the margins are narrowing
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear.

The burnt towns, the dead children, I remember the blood as well,
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear,

and my own life, with no meaning with no voice and with empty eyes,
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear.

Watch out!* Watch out! And the mercenaries who are governing you…
Watch out! Watch out! … those same ones will be sentencing you tomorrow,
and “Hail to you, Cesar who are going to die”* they will tell you.
As the saying is “et preterea censeo Carthago delenda est”*.

You frighten me like the shouts from the stadiums and like the flags,
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear.

I watch you in fear, keeping my feelers drawn in,
Ach Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear.

Watch out! Watch out! And the mercenaries who are governing you…
Watch out! Watch out!… those same ones will be sentencing you tomorrow,
and “Hail to you, Cesar who are going to die”* they will tell you.
As the saying is “et preterea censeo Carthago delenda est”.

You frighten me like the shouts from the stadiums and like the flags,
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear.

and you fall in love there without colour, without odour, without myth
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear,

Watch out! Watch out! And the mercenaries who are governing you…
Watch out! Watch out!… those same ones will be sentencing you tomorrow,
and “Hail to you, Cesar who are going to die”* they will tell you.
As the saying is “et preterea censeo Carthago delenda est”.

But I – I shall bring you violins, and a sweet little drum, to play for you,
Erinoula dear, Erinoula dear…

(Translator’s notes:
* Watch out! Watch out!: separately, the words “πέφτει σύρμα” are “wire falling”, but as an expression, they are used as a warning of approaching danger.
* Hail to you, Cesar… : In the Roman gladiator fights, the combatants would salute the emperor with “Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant”, meaning “Hail Cesar, those who are about to die salute you”. By simply changing the case of “morituri” (or here its Greek counterpart, μελλοθάνατοι), the “about to die” is applied to the emperor instead of the one who speak to him.
* “et preterea censeo Carthago delenda est”: quote from the Roman statesman Cato, famous for his virtue and his stuffiness, who is reputed to have ended his every speech with this sentence, until he got his way and Rome waged total war against Carthage.

Αλλά εγώ Θα σου πάρω βιολιά και ένα ντέφι γλυκό να σου παίζουν
Ερηνούλα μου, Ερηνούλα μου..

A harmonica that cries
With the voice of a child
A scar of the times
Which frighten and burn us

A harmonica that cries
That is our own presence
when we listen to the anthem saying
“hail oh hail to you, liberty”

And our voices are in the air:
in truth, what is the truth?
when you live like this, by force of habit
A day and yet another another day

And the sky that shelters us
A harmonica that cries
and we, without suspicion and fine
in a foundering miracle

A few good ones, and those others victims of fate
[they are] resigned, all the way down;
look with how much tension and passion
the first are turning into the last

A harmonica that cries
I follow your steps
Through the wilderness of the world
And I come back, here, to you.

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