Crow
Eyes of the sky dry salt pans
cried for forty days and
forty nights
after the captivity in the sand
the chase on the bone place
voice hidden in the scorpion’s path and
hair turned into serpents
after the killing and the price paid
on the left shoulder of regret
the first guilt had already perched
At Least
The statues, he said, die if you don’t look at them.
I’ve seen them numerous times fall with half-closed eyes.
They wait to see if anyone can look at them; they get up
again. Perhaps for this reason stores in the central
streets, inside and outside, or the neighbourhood tiny shops
are full of small, large, and any size mirrors. Hanging off
the walls, they vaguely shine, as if indifferently, in secret
anticipation: they mirror the bakery chimney, one loquat
tree, two women, and the cart of the small flower shop with
the empty clay flowerpots.
Late in the evening, around eight o’clock, when the stores
close, the mirrors empty at once. Each of them, clerk or
store owner, or customer, takes one mirror and gets into
his room while out in the streets, the windless vigil already
thickens.
III
In the agora’s anonymity your face vanishes behind myriad
idols floating in the blind mirror people reflecting forest
your dream seeping out amid tree trunks
your goal of creating a new world falls into foggy memory
sun-tanned skin fades like boreal winter
then burns white as great hand pushes crowd through
chlorination process masses popping out from
end of the monotonous machine whitewash dressed and
holding sweetest energy in their hearts
like grains of sugar you stand among millions of others
in a spoon of the celestial master who laughs at the commotion
winking his left eye in this anonymity of the agora your
energy mingles with the energy of others and once you fall
deep into the mouth of a hungry abyss leading
to an insatiable stomach of ever-hungry Hades
you can only remember green leaves and turtles
beautiful legs and their cosmogonic join where pleasures
and goals funnel you can have only memories of places
you traveled or didn’t from fear of flight on planes
in this anonymity of the crowd you are pushed downward
becoming soluble matter grand master digests with help of`
bile turning you into a green-yellow ornament
sometimes your energy creates future poems
other times you are just farted out with pressure releasing
agony foulness complementing hyacinths
in this impersonal agora you are salami at the master’s lunch
and your goal to create a new world becomes his burp
at the end of it all intensifying the fragrance of lilac blooms
seventeen
With all this ardour
you gained
because of the compression
in this zone
so much you run
to spread
to foreign lands
and a piece of wood
you threw into the water
so, you can sail
II
the beautiful Kore
we loved,
oh, mister,
was like
a cyclamen
in her death
bed
let us dust off our muddy pants
let us stir the harps of artesian wells
let us drive the gypsies to the sea
let us harvest the breasts
of our most beautiful
girls
excerpt
…that he was soon at the end of the climb. He found the courage to go
faster, but he was still blind. Suddenly, his face got lit by this phenomenal
light emanating from somewhere in front of him. He felt
dazzled: was it someone there, or was he alone as always? The strong
light was still here in front of his eyes, and a heavenly cry suddenly
came out of his mouth, a scream, a voice he couldn’t agree was his,
yet he heard it as from the depth of his essence.
“Why? Why?”
A smile appeared in front of his eyes, a smile. Whose smile
was it? Hermes found himself sitting alone again at his small table,
looking outside his window. His neglected book seemed to be complaining
to him. Yet he didn’t feel like studying anymore. He leaned
back on his chair, still wondering what just happened. The phone
rang, and it was Giovanna on the other end.
“Hi Hermes. How are you?”
“I’m okay. What’s up?”
“Want me to come over?”
“Sure, come along.”
Ten minutes later, she was in his room. She looked very pretty
in her mini-skirt and a dark green blouse. He admired her looks,
which she thoroughly enjoyed. She hugged him, and their lips
locked. A few minutes later, they lay naked on his bed, where all the
books had been earlier. She climbed on top of him, giving him all she
knew to make both happy.
A little later, when both were satisfied, she said, “You have
already started your thesis?”
“Yeah, I have to get it going slowly.” She knew very well why he
was in such a hurry; he had told her many times, yet she always hoped
that he would change his mind at some point, even if that happened
on his last day here. She got up, a bit upset.
“I’m going to have a shower.”
He followed her to the bathroom, and they hopped under the
warm stream of water. He rubbed her gently. Slowly, her arousal
became obvious, as was his.
Golden River
My glance runs free, vanishes
through the waves and clouds up high
only to stop where the sky
touches the sea and talks
the asleep shore blows the breeze lightly
a bird turns white the sky becomes black
the night arrives only the west turns rosy
the day resembles a smiling corpse
and when the west’s joy departs
we’ll gaze at the moon in our lake
creating a wide river of gold
that time, my fresh love, I’ll say to you
deep in our hearts, sea filled with passion,
this golden river is our Love
The Exile Diaries
24th of February
The flashlight glows onto
two broken arms
and you couldn’t tell whether
the broken leg was yours.
It was when we met
under the big wall
each of us straddling
that broken leg that belonged to us.
24th of April
The shadow of a leaf inverted in the sunshine.
Take off your shoes. Rest. Remember.
The lumberjack’s hands smell of raisin.
Young girls sitting behind baskets
separate the purple from the red.
Your mistake is that you don’t want to die;
yet perhaps even the dead get hungry.
Nature
Cosmic breeze has blessed
our edge of the galaxy
with a barren planet
portrait of your austere body
playful winds have blessed this land
with snowdrifts and
the leafless poplars,
portrait of your dry curves
lust has blessed your flesh
with a hardened nipple
and an erect clit
portrait of your eroticism
ellipsoid magnolia leaves
dream of an April noon and
peace ripples through
your two tympanums
as your eyes dream inside
the petals of a red rose
a snowdrift, a galaxy and a nipple,
harmony in the arms of life.
Excerpt
“Anyway, Michael, Danny would be a good man for you. He’s a hill farmer to his toe nails. It’s in his blood. Like yourself. The family worked that land up there for generations.”
“Sounds like the very man I’m looking for,” said Michael.
“You’d be bringing another Fenian rebel into the village,” Jim cautioned. “He’ll turn your place into a Republican arsenal. And watch out if John Hackett discovers it.”
“Aw no, Jim,” said Peter. “Young Danny has no truck with that kind of thing. He’s no rebel, believe me. He knew what his father was up to, but what could he do? The fact that Hackett left him alone tells you he’s all right. I know him well. I’ve been pulling or filling the teeth of three generations of Boylans. I’ll get word to him to come and see you, Michael.”
“Sounds good, Peter.”
“I hope you don’t live to regret it, Michael,” said Jim Patterson.
҂
He strode resolutely eastwards along the main road in the direction of Carraghlin. He stopped on the bridge over the Shannagh River, lit a cigarette, leaned his elbows on the granite slabs that capped the wall, and stared down into the turbulent water. His mind had taken a tight hold on Flynn Casey and wouldn’t let go.
Now Flynn Casey was coming back from his latest visit to Dublin.
Bastard, Jim thought. We Protestants are not going to live in an Ireland ruled by the Roman Catholic Church. Never.
Jim Patterson was brought up in fear of Home Rule for Ireland, afraid, like most Protestants, that success for Home Rule would establish a Roman Catholic domination over the whole country. Members of the Orange Order in particular, which included every man in the Patterson family, remained deeply distrustful of Popery and of Home Rule as an alliance that threatened both their Order and the militant Puritanism of their ancestors.
Jim turned and looked across the road at the Big House of the Hamilton family, dark and brooding in the shadow of the trees on the other side of the river.
You should be standing with us, Clifford Hamilton, not against us, he thought spitefully. You Fenian-loving, heathen-loving bastard. You’re no better than Flynn Casey. Don’t you know the IRA are burning down big houses like yours. Just wait, Clifford Hamilton. And you, Flynn Casey. You’re both going to get yours.
