The Traitor

I hunted the streets of Athens

 --I was a beardless youth then.

I had a pistol and a fine,

fearful optimism.

The leaders send me to find

a traitor who hung out in Gouva.

I find the house and knock on his door

and his mother welcomes me with a smile.

--Sit down, son, and rest yourself,

my son will be here any time now;

don’t judge us by our poverty

our hearts are still good.

I look at her, how to tell her

that I’ve come to kill her traitor son;

on the steaming blood of her child

I’ve come to build a new Greece!