The Unquiet Land

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Excerpt

“It may arrive in time for Christmas. Santa Claus will bring it to you.” Caitlin straightened her body in the bed.
Michael pulled back the clothes and looked at her almost flat stomach. “You can’t see anything yet.”
“Not for a while,” Caitlin said, straining her eyes and neck to look at her belly. “But it’s there all right. I’ve been awfully sick, Michael.”
Michael kissed her and softly, almost reverently, caressed her stomach. “I can hardly believe it. Isn’t it strange, Caitlin? We’ve been making love for five or six years and once we decide to get married you become pregnant.”
“That should make you happy and more at ease,” Caitlin said.
“Why?” Michael asked.
“It’s a good sign. It’s a gift from God to let us know there’s no curse on our marriage. It’s been blessed in heaven.”
“That’s nice,” Michael said.
Caitlin held up her arms. Michael lowered his head to her breast, and she clasped him round the neck. “I love you, Michael,” she murmured between kisses. “I love you so very, very much.”
She stroked his back and buttocks as he lay half across her with his chin on her shoulder and his cheek held tightly to hers. “What’s wrong, Michael? Don’t you want to? On our wedding night?”
Michael did not move. His voice came muffled from the pillow: “I can’t.”
“Why?” Caitlin asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied helplessly. “It’s just that … Well, I keep thinking there’s a baby in there. My son. Perhaps even a daughter. A little living thing.”
“But it’s been there for weeks now,” Caitlin argued.
“Yes, but now I know it’s there. That makes a difference.”
“No it doesn’t. Or it shouldn’t.” Caitlin smiled. “But it’s perfectly all right, Michael. It can’t come to any harm. It’s protected like a seed in an apple.”
“But it’s not a seed in an apple; it’s a live human being with eyes and hands and heart and brain.”
“Michael, don’t be silly. Come on. It’s all right, I tell you. Make love to me, tonight above all nights.”
“It wouldn’t work, Caitlin. I just can’t do it.”
Caitlin lay still in disappointment. Then she smiled and stroked Michael’s back. “Don’t worry, Michael. It’s all right. I won’t force you.”
Michael rolled over on to his back.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Swamped

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Excerpt

Eteocles’s pocket is full of stones and on his back he carries a
hunter’s bag with food for later. Anthony carries an empty hunter’s
bag for what they might get today. In ten minutes they are away from
the houses and under the protection of the olive trees. Here the
morning sounds are different: muffled echoes from the rustle of the
breeze in the tree branches and cries of the occasional startled bird
as it flies from the trees or the osier bushes they pass here and there.
The morning star is slowly fading and the first rays of sunlight are
not far off now.
Irma plunges into the thickets of osiers or bunches of cane fields
trying to spring a rabbit from these property dividers that make a
good hiding place for rabbits. Anthony loads his shotgun and nods
to Eteocles to be vigilant and to watch the dog closely. They both
know that, when Irma gets agitated and wags her tail, these are the
signs that a rabbit is close. Eteocles stops and Anthony moves forward
ten steps, enough to give him the openness of the field in case he has
to shoot.
A few minutes later Irma begins wagging her tail excitedly. Anthony
encourages her with a familiar call, “Eheheheheh…Irma…”
and the eager dog intensifies her search around an osier bush when,
suddenly, a rabbit is spooked and dashes out of the bush to Anthony’s
left. He follows the animal for a second or two with the barrel of the
gun and then fires. The rabbit seems to jump in the air before falling
on the ground dead. A delighted Irma runs and grabs the animal in
her jaws, then brings it back to her master and proudly stands in front
of him with the limp body in her teeth. Anthony takes the rabbit out
of the dog’s mouth and weighs it in his hand. It’s still small, a yearling,
but a good start to the day nevertheless.
They already have their first catch and it isn’t even full daylight
yet. Excited with this early success, they carry on walking among the
olive trees. the light rustle of the leaves and the chirping of the awakening
birds create a natural symphony conducted by an invisible
maestro. Eteocles tunes his ears to the avian arias, eager to identify
one close enough to try a shot.

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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

Wheat Ears

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Confession
My confession was simple:
Father, I said, I’ve sinned
guilt of the universe sits
heavy on my chest
forgive me that
I passionately loved
the bloomed hyacinth and
the flight swings of swallows
yet my greatest sins
my unmeasured love
for the child’s laughter
and for the beggars standing
with extended hands
filled with good wishes.
My confession was simple:
Father, I said, I’ve sinned
Straight to the Purgatory
the priest opined

https://draft2digital.com/book/3748127#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume VII

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Hour of the Shepherds

(Perhaps we, hidden as we were, looked to find our
bearings: the direction of where behind the mountains
behind the clouds was George’s sheepfold surrounded
by tree branches, and George, so young, surrounded by
a great circular loneliness. Would his hands remain
as strong, as unquestioned during such a rain?)
The last flies swirled around the rooms, as if drugged
almost dead
like tiny inkwells full of black ink that fell off the shelf
of a childish disease;
a passing troupe performed in
the big café of the upper neighbourhood; the troupe also
included two midgets. Children had great fun; they
felt that they had suddenly grown; they could now
look deep in the water well or to climb up to the attic
and scare away the small geckos and cockroaches.
Ribbons, tied on the hair of the girls, became alive,
pinned the hair behind the ears of the girls, their necks
leaving their faces clear, powerful like steel (those kids
of another era, of the upper or the lower
neighbourhood?)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763947

Red in Black

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August
Your sign under the grapevine
and the heatwave of August
sweat under your armpits
the body’s salt
taste of the world
as the thought of winter
comes like a perennial thief
to erase the heat off your forehead
and off the wings of the sparrow
that suddenly started
chasing the cicada which
quite unexpectedly performs
strange mid-air configurations
just to avoid the sparrow’s beak
enough to manage to reproduce
the new generation of cicadas
and you took my hand, together
to help the cicada in its task

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562962#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771713208

In the Quiet After Slaughter

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Excerpt

– Ed wins again, someone hissed, he dies.
– Ladies and gentlemen, O’Donnell began, reaching inside the
oil can . . .
Members crossed fingers and nibbled hangnails. They squeezed
crosses, mouthed prayers, stroked lucky charms.
– The winner of the Spring Festival draw this year is . . .
My friend says it was so quiet inside Ed’s garage that night you
could hear air escaping a radial.
For the winner of the Dodge Car Club draw the experience was everything
the previous attendees had said it would be. Five leggy beauties
piled into the vehicle for the languorous cruise along the parade route.
Miss Brake & Muffler was instantly besotted with the club’s appreciative
representative. Later that same evening, the smoke from the barbecue
pits dissipating, the last notes from the bandstand fading, the
couple took a spin up Little Mountain. There, under a draping laurel
vine, the beauty queen shared with the lucky draw winner the qualities
that had earned her that esteemed title.
Alas, it was the club’s final involvement with the festival. Ed’s
garage, encouraged by the cumulative efforts of termites, flopped
over on its side one gusty afternoon. Adulthood beckoning, the
membership soon disbanded.
Because he didn’t know what else to do, Ed applied to the military.
Because its brass couldn’t convince anyone else to sign up, he
was accepted. As for the Dodge, the central character in this story, it
vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared. I didn’t see much of
O’Donnell afterwards.
Sgt. McManus retired to a place not unlike the lake of his imaginings.
On torpid summer afternoons, his rowboat drifting in the afternoon
breeze, he often wondered about that car and the ruffians who
deified it. McManus went on to an old folks’ home and then a grave
without learning more.
Years later a police museum was built at the rear of the
station house. A call went out for exhibits. McManus’s widow was
invited to submit items of interest. She donated her late husband’s
many citations, his oft-used hickory stick and, because he always
wrote everything down at the end of each shift, his logbooks. They
hadn’t been opened in decades.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562874

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897971

Μιχάλης Γραμματάς, Ο θαυμαστής

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Μιχάλης Γραμματάς, Ο θαυμαστής

Ken Kirkby – Warrior Painter

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Excerpt

Albert Einstein may be the most recognizable of the great men associated
with this level of scientific achievement. Every school child can quote the
famed formula E=mc2 but many are not aware that the 1921 Nobel Prize
for Physics was awarded to Einstein for his work on photo electric effect.
The Awards Council deemed his Theory of Relativity “too controversial.”
To compound the matter, movies and the entertainment world of the
day parodied this brand of science as comic caricatures and undoubtedly
evil geniuses. Like Einstein, they often had halos of wild hair and spoke
with foreign accents.
Since those early days, quantum mechanics has infiltrated other
scientific disciplines such as chemistry, electronics, and information science.
Theories have been revised, quantified and reformulated, so unless you have
a passion for the journey, it is difficult to keep up. Even the language tends
to mislead us into thinking this is so vast as to be unimaginable.
You might note how the public attitude towards quantum mechanics
has been skewed. Take the phrase quantum leap; in common usage this
refers to a very large jump between things. In fact, the actual meaning
of quantum leap is a shift from the tiniest thing to the very next tiniest
thing—in other words, it is the tiniest leap that is possible in reality.
The absolute opposite of popular understanding. All quantum means is
the specification of a quantity, whether it deals with energy or physical
phenomena.
Another anomaly that always makes me laugh is the idea that all
this started with a Big Bang. What a strange name to give to the origin
of our world. We conveniently forget that there can be no sound without
atmosphere. Therefore, to be accurate, no atmosphere—no bang.
Logically, it must have started with a ‘Big Nothing.’ The problem is
that the so-called beginning wasn’t even the beginning, because gravity
already existed. It is far less spectacular in these terms—an example of
how words are corrupted in use.
~~
In 1922, the year following Einstein’s award, Niels Bohr received
the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on the structure of atoms. There
was collegial disagreement between the two scientists…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562902

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763289

Katerina Anghelaki Rooke – Selected Poems

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Time for a Person in Love
Time is different for a person in love;
one’s not practical.
moments come to an end with no results
future is planned with the most beautiful images
of yesterday’s love
separation is regarded as death
when the feeling dies
one doesn’t recognize oneself.
When we met at the grocery store
we greeted each other
then the dialogue started
euphoria of the first encounter:
if you had the chance to touch me
I’d leave feeling light and with
my eyes on the ground when the horrible
glance of separation appears again.
I let go of everything
the moment from the present
and I enter into a different
foggy and indivisible moment.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562965

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763521

The Long Road

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Crossroads
Crosshairs point to pointless
a warning pointing to nothing
you said,
take your youthful wholeness and
dart it at this flashing crossroad
let your eyes stare
deep in heart of destiny
between cracks of leaden clouds
and find solace in the chaos
of the four directions with
dreams yearning to become reality
and fear of ambivalent commitment
your glance is a mirror
your gray hair reminds you of bygone
days when you had choices
crossroads and a warning sign to nothing.
Look at today’s emptiness and dauntlessness
walk without your vanishing idol
let go of your thoughts and grasp
the unknown as if it were familiar

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763939