The configure step fails if x11-libs/pango is not installed. After installing x11-libs/pango, the emerge succeeds.
Interesting... But pango is a dependency of gtk, which must also be installed if USE="X". Or are you installing this with USE="-X"? I know it's been a while, but can you remember how you got into this situation in the first place?
I do not remember how this problem occurred. I doubt that I unmerged pango. I'm sure that the USE keyword "X" is not disabled. Thanks for reading this bug. Maybe you can close it.
+*gkrellm-2.3.5-r3 (24 Mar 2015) + + 24 Mar 2015; Justin Lecher <jlec@gentoo.org> + +files/gkrellm-2.3.5-binding.patch, +files/gkrellm-2.3.5-config.patch, + +files/gkrellm-2.3.5-format-security.patch, + +files/gkrellm-2.3.5-sansfont.patch, +files/gkrellm-2.3.5-width.patch, + +gkrellm-2.3.5-r3.ebuild, metadata.xml: + Bump to EAPI=5; add missing dependency on x11-libs/pango, #382235; fix for + format-security, #520556; import various patches from fedora +