Privilege
I don’t get it, he says, this up and down.
To forget I look in the small mirror.
I see the immobile window; I see the wall.
Nothing changes in or out of the mirror.
I place a flower on the chair (if it lasts).
I live here, at this number, on this street.
Suddenly they lift me (with the chair and the flower)
they take me down, carry me up, I don’t know.
Luckily, I managed to put this mirror in my pocket.
Angry Poem About the Occupation
Don’t tell me the Kouroi that adorned the Hellenic shores have abandoned this forsaken place. This land, this black land, thousand times embittered never stopped to give birth to brave men. Even if we shed tears, we mourn their loss and are joyous for having them as our brothers. Who shall cry for the death of so many brave men? I shall cry and narrate their glory, but now I sing for Mitsos Asteriou, the eagle of Roumeli Tower of Atalanta, the brave, the manly, is among the first brave men of justice and freedom. His heart was as big as the mountains and his mind as high as the cypresses. Workers, let go of the tools let go of the hammers and with both hands show your contempt for the fascists, the lawless perverts who swore to the night that surrounds them, to enslave the World and spread darkness. And now tighten your fists, raise them high let us all together sing the song of the workers’ victory: and behold, Mitsos is walking on earth. His face is pale, his lips embittered although benevolence always shines in his eyes. He’s the one who believed, who was full of love look at how he extended his bloodied hands to us to hold us tightly onto his ripped chest.
To the wall they brought him blindfolded to be killed to the place they leaned his kind body the stones shed tears and wail like ghosts and an eagle, Hellenic eagle, flies over there and shades the black place with his wings and constantly groans, exhumes bitterness and curses.
The City
You said: “I’ll go to another land, to another sea.
I’ll find another city better than this one.
Every effort I make is ill-fated, doomed.
And my heart, like a dead thing, lies buried.
How long will my mind continue to wither like this?
Everywhere I turn my eyes, wherever they happen to fall
I see the black ruins of my life, here
where I’ve squandered, wasted and ruined so many years.”
New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will return to the same streets.
You will age in the same neighbourhoods, and in these
same houses, you will turn gray. You will always
arrive in the same city. Don’t even hope to escape it.
There is no ship for you, no road out of town.
As you have wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you wasted it in the whole world.
Stories
Yes, I couldn’t deny
my promise to mention
my first cousin Antony
best dancer of western Crete
and narrate his sweet story
impossible not to include it
in my recollections
like the beautiful breasts
of the girl I touched
behind the movie theater
in that side street where
we frequented when the bright
lights could reveal
our secret thoughts and
like my distant cousin, who once
jumped from one edge of a ravine
to the other just to defy Death
yes, between the two edges
three meters apart where
just thirty meters lower
Hades’ gaping mouth lurked,
I too dared touch the breast
of the fourteen year old girl
Dawn
A boat-man passed with wide strides in the light-blue
dawn,
young, suntanned, ample in his body, brutish,
he turned in the quay towards the jetty. The echo
of his big, wet soles was heard all over the harbor.
And then, the lights of the quay, the old houses, the
faded window shutters,
despite their rusted hinges, the dust, the spiders,
were ready for dawn. And truly the sun came up;
its rosy and gray color curled around the cranes
of the quay
like the hair of a woman after her bath.
Tribute
Forehead of silver and your blue
eyes reflected beautifully
as you opened the piano
two fresh roses shivered in the vase
like flowers your temples bloomed.
Your hands fought and won
against the keys that retrieved
creating notes, the melody reward.
We listened. And the emotions-slaves
regained their freedom.
Years have gone, well I don’t remember,
though I believe that you had also sung
unless the nightingales sang
whether silent or talking your lips are fountain
when my years are but tired deer.
Butterflies will always flutter
leaving the pollen on the hand
goodbye only but a rustle, your hand as silk
when you vanished; butterflies
will always fly out through the window.
Excerpt
There were wooded areas and areas hidden by
rows of willows where the individual groups
settled and began the lunch ritual. The girls
might spend the entire one-hour break eating
and comparing “boy” notes, and preening
themselves and each other. And always a toilet
break it seemed, before starting back to the
school to wash and brush. The boys rushed
through lunch, even in the spring sun, and
were back on either the football field or on the
softball diamond, to play scrub ball. Two sides
were chosen and after every one on the batting
side had a chance to bat, the batters went out on
the field and the fielders hit. It was a great way
of involving whoever wanted to play. The lunch hour flew by and
all too soon the bell was being rung. On occasion, the two teachers
joined in and the lunch hour would be extended by ten to fifteen
minutes. Every minute was a bonus.
Lake
Depth of thought
only brings
illumination to the surface
of my mind
On the translucent surface
of this evening I’ll reflect
said the tallest fir—
calling the night pneuma
to dance in thankfulness
Great Spirit observing
from within my serene eyelids
to asking words of wisdom
from breeze faintly stroking
my trunk as though a painter’s
brush defining my wish
of letting today’s tiredness
behind and delve into the spirited
mind of water image floating
on smooth skin of the lake
Excerpt
…friends she made last year – two teenage girls and a younger boy who
lived next door to Pa with their widowed mother. They’d grown very
close over the summer, and Rachael had been excited at the prospect
of seeing them again. What she hadn’t anticipated was that Pa would
marry the widow lady and take on those two girls and boy as his own.
Rachael kicked at a small rock and sent it flying into the ditch. She
wouldn’t even have Lyssa here this summer because her cousin was
leaving in a couple of weeks for Vancouver.
Lyssa had told Aunt Ruby she was going for a holiday to see the West
Coast but would come home in the fall. Rachael didn’t believe her. When
Lyssa got to the big city, she probably wouldn’t ever come home. When
she had learned that Rachael couldn’t go to Ontario, Lyssa had tried to
talk her into going to the Coast with her on the bus. How she would love
to do that, but her parents would never let her go even for a few weeks.
Seemed they didn’t want her to have any fun at all anymore.
Thoughts of Lyssa made Rachael remember the party at the
Harrisons’ tonight. It would be in full swing, and where was she?
Walking alone on a dusty highway on a beautiful evening at the end
of the school year. Oh no, she wouldn’t be allowed to go to Vancouver
– she wasn’t even allowed to go to her cousin’s grad party.
She heard a car approaching from behind but paid little attention
until it slowed and pulled up beside her. She looked up, expecting to
see one of the district farmers or a hired hand on his way to town. But
a thatch of red hair above a freckled face made her stop abruptly and
stare. Kevin. She had not seen him since the disastrous night of the
dance at Spirit Lake.
“Well, hello, sweetheart.” He grinned at her from the open window.
“Fancy meeting you here, and on a Saturday night. How come
you’re not at Lyssa’s party? Or is that where you’re heading? Hop in,
I’ll give you a lift.”
“No thanks, I’m not going. I have too much to do to go to parties.”
She started to walk on.
Excerpt
Ian buttoned his jacket, lit another cigarette and waited. His feet were sore and his calves ached. He shifted his position every couple of minutes. He thought: They can’t sit all this time on that concrete wall without their arses getting sore. He lit another cigarette. At his feet a litter of butts and grey ash messed the pavement.
The sky was darkening to sea-blue. A few stars twinkled.
At last they moved. While applause for the performance died to silence, and a low buzz of conversation replaced it, Nora and her friends slipped stiffly from the wall and stretched and put on cardigans. Ian saw Nora’s large bust below her blouse. She turned to the sallow man and said something. He replied and waved a long, skinny hand. The three girls walked away together along the path by the sea-wall and out on to the main road. They turned to the right in the direction of the Drumard Strand Hotel.
Ian followed until they had sauntered past his car. When he himself reached the car he climbed in and drove to the hotel by a side road that passed a row of private houses with gardens extending to the beach. It led him by the railway station and the bus terminus to the driveway of the hotel. He parked the car, combed his hair in the rear-view mirror, straightened his jacket and then walked casually into the plushy ambience of the hotel. It struck him as being somewhat old-world and serious but comfortable.
He entered the leathery den of the Slieve Corragh Room, where he had first met Nora and her friend. The bar was busy but not full. He stood in the doorway for a moment while the muted hubbub of voices and laughter and the warm smoky air drifted past him into the thickly carpeted lobby. He looked at the coffered, wooden ceiling, the white upper walls above dark, varnished wainscoting. A large painting of Slieve Corragh hung on the wall to his left. He felt at home here. This was his milieu. He strode across to the bar and sat on an empty stool beside a naval captain who had his back turned half towards him as he talked to a lady with a blue rinse in her hair.
‘Scotch and water, please. Glenfiddich.’
He waited. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the doorway. The anticipation and the Scotch and the aftermath of a mixed grill were teasing his stomach maliciously. He was acting like an adolescent, like a seventeen-year-old boy suffering his first unbearable love for the girl up the street, the skinny little girl in pigtails who had suddenly, without his noticing, grown into a woman. Ian’s knees were trembling. He gulped down the Scotch and ordered another.
Manolis Aligizakis 