IMPROVISATION #28
(In Memory of Yannis Ritsos
1909- 1990)

In residence
of permanent exile
and resistance
of a memorable body
in the poetic vein
he is removed
not as a savant in vain
but in the regiment
of those who escaped
to the isles
from the fascist noose
as a servant who cut loose
barely escaping in a century
without many answers
of subterranean reason
in the penury laugh
of petulant glances
from the colonel's smile
of the general staff
as Yannis Ritsos
had barely written ''Liberty"
on their bloody epitaph
when at a spring landscape
he leaves his initials
by a Mediterranean rainbow
near a garden Evergreen tree
shaped by a geometric design
of an abstract clever Picasso.