Charioteer
You took the main road that dashes down
from the dark thighs of Delphi
like the arrow’s lissome quiver
symmetrical
to their questionable stature
you vibrated its unruffled gravel-road
with polemic sandals and the waterfall thunder
you held tight in your hands the reigns of the sea
and a reddish coppery gleam.
Arriving
you talked about the serenity of the god
who suckles the nipple of a star.
Adulthood
If I write my biography someday, I won’t forget to report my
hatred for dye houses; they are spiteful, and when they returned
the last children’s clothes, without wings, we got quite ill and
when we recovered, we felt awkward and strange, like the ones who
have disappeared for years, and when they return, they make excuses
that the garden was far away. Where had they gone? Unknown.
Only now, mother cries more often.
Kraskolkyn pulls delicately at the creases of an expensive grey mohair suit,
but his tie is loose, his smart shirt is open, the hairy fruit of his paunch sports a
chunky gold chain. He’s adorned with gold—wristwatch, rings, tieclip, fountain
pen. Fancy leather luggage bulges on the back seat. Pauline would have
been appalled at this display of conspicuous affluence. That dongle on the
chain has a phallic shape. This is not a correct person.
“Never mind, it don’t matter . . . I get everyone out of the shit, know what I
mean? I put ’em in deep. Oh yeah! But I get ’em out again . . .” The laughter
bellows on and on. Lucas can’t find the correct verbal register for dealing with
this big Kraskolkyn.
His fellow-traveller is delving into a pocket and pulling out cigars. Lucas is
queasy about smoking, he’s only tried timid experiments with Wicked
Trevor’s hash behind the gym at Westway, but now he feels obliged to take
part in another kind of machismo, its camaraderie, matches, blue smoke,
coughs, expectorations.
Kraskolkyn slaps him on the back. “Crazy damn kids. Always on the run.
Give bastards the runaround . . . Just have a nice cigar . . . then you be OK.
Enjoy the sights.”
Lucas isn’t OK. All he can hear is this bullying laughter.
“You gonna love those sights, I tell you. Better than any nutty house, you
know? I put loadsa money inna sights, believe me kid, crazy peoples gonna love
it all over the Seaside.”
Mr. K chuckles, chews purposefully on his cigar, as if waiting for a confession;
and Lucas realises that he should have the willpower to keep silent. The
slopes are becoming thickly wooded. He doesn’t know this edge of the Moor,
nor can he relate it to the location of distant Oakhill—or the coastal resorts.
His rescuer (abductor?) is asking him if he wants to learn any good jokes.
Lucas moves his head ambiguously. Too late, a fruity narration is already underway:
a Ukrainian, a Serb, an Englishman and a Croat went to the toilet. In
the toilet, see, there was this big telly—
The car lurches over potholes, compounding his difficulties in following
Mr. K’s polyglot diction, so he can only nod weakly at the gaseous explosions
of mirth. His head starts to throb with the noise and tedious obscurity of it all.
They’ve just roared past the darkened ruins of a station. He thinks the
crooked signboard said Abbots Oakham—for Oakhill Hospital. There, there’s
no way back, not now, it’s too late, best to close down that area, keep his eyes
open.
The Enemy
He not only fought against loneliness and isolation, but against his whole identity, been in constant rupture and orgiastic sectoral emotions that couldn’t settle in his pneumatic completeness, but always took him to the immense void, lurking behind every set concept, that rendered him unable to position one against the other or choose one so he could annul the other; his vision was multifaceted and plethoric opposite the metallic and unbendable silence which destroyed every effort for relaxation and acceptance of the regular, the common-sensical with his pride unable to settle down, as he was not only against the world but against his viscera that demanded the impossible of him
Focusing
Again, and always the selection and the contest
are hard. We stood on the stone terrace for a while
listening to the vertical silence of the trees occasionally
interrupted by the minimal exclamation of a finch.
The faraway mountains are lighter blue than the
unreachable. What can you look at? He asked, what can
you avoid, what can you remember? We hid the holed
undershirt with the small monogram between two pillows.
The hole was passed onto the body and the wall, while
the three blind men held their violins underarm, raising
their heads slowly to look straight at you.
And they said to one another:
Who’s the one with the violin
who isn’t pleasing our hearts
and inflames the surprise and
anger in our viscera? Who’s
conniving with his unwise
hand awakening this violin
which talks of what we watch
it doesn’t see and what we hold
it doesn’t keep and in all
festivities and joys the anguish
stands before us like the traitor
of our kin and killer of our joy?
No other bow has ever played
such ugly, novice and imperfect
music on any gypsy violin
like the music of this foolish one.
And only the young children
oh the beloved children
filled my serene loneliness
turning it into my main fun
since my violin always
surprised and attracted them
and they run around me
with their big and bright eyes
into which they always
had hidden a tiny secret and
they made of all their surprise
and awe a great silence and joy
from my violin, the cursed
violin as if my own race,
from the far future time.
excerpt
indeed Mr. Wilson was there with an Indian girl who
he violated sexually in front of their eyes. What could they do
with such a secret? Marcus shook his head.
“We could tell the teachers about this…you know,” Marcus
said to Lucas then he added, “no we’d better let know George;
yes, he’s the one we should let know, no one else. You promise?
No one else for now…” he added and Lucas nodded yes. With an
undoubted ache filling their hearts they took the piece of wood
they went to the wood working shop for and as silently as they
could they returned to their beds. Marcus hid the wood under
his mattress hoping to give it to a relative next time he might visit
his tribe and ask him to create a totem out of it.
Next day the clock struck seven thirty as if someone had
struck it with a strap when Marcus and Lucas got up. The Kamloops
sky was full of leaden clouds which spread moist over the
houses with their green yards and the slanting roofs and on the
hearts of the people. Marcus and Lucas and three other kids were
peeling potatoes for George when Marcus got his chance to
talk to the Cretan cook about the event they witnessed. George
freaked out when he heard the detail description of what Mr.
Wilson did the night before. So angry he was that he left the
kitchen and ran down to Anton’s domain where he related to him
what he learned from the boys.
Anton’s face darkened, his eyes turned fiery red, his lips
tightened as did his fists; he could strike anyone at this moment,
so angry he felt, though the guilty person wasn’t around to
take the punches. He looked at George and his voice sounded
as if coming from the darkness where his heart was now. He
gazed at the window facing east while the horizon at the far distance
told of the presence of forests, which stood opposite the
beastly human behaviour, and valleys with rivers…
excerpt
…about his belief that there were two St Patricks. He has historical evidence that he says supports his theory. He won’t be home till tomorrow evening.’
Joe turned his head away from her in indecision and stared into the red-hot heart of the fire in the range.
‘Joe, I want to have your baby.’
His head jerked round, and he looked at her with confused incredulity in his eyes, unsure of himself. ‘Nora, think of Liam, your husband.’
‘Why must you be always so considerate of others, Joe?’ Nora asked. ‘Think of me now. I love you. I want to have your baby. I want something that is yours to hold on to and to cherish for the rest of my life, something that is part of you and part of me that will be a living memorial of our love. Please, Joe. I need this.’
He placed an open palm on each side of her face and looked into her deep, dark eyes where tears glimmered like raindrops on a leaf. He knew that what she was asking him to do was sinful, and part of him recoiled from it. But his moral reluctance was brushed aside by the strong, sexual urges of a twenty-nine- year-old male, more especially of a male who spent most of his time at sea. ‘All right, I’ll stay,’ he said quietly and kissed her on the forehead.
‘I’ll put Owen Joe in his cot and wet a pot of tea,’ Nora said. ‘You can sample the barmbrack I baked this afternoon. We even have home-churned butter to put on it. A gift from Janet’s mother.’
They sat quietly by the fire, Joe in the rocking chair, Nora at his feet, her back against his legs, a book open in her hands. Upstairs the baby slept in the cot at the foot of Nora and Liam’s bed. Outside, the sky was still bright, the setting of the sun delayed by the manipulation of the British war-time summer clock. The limpid blue of the daytime sky was gently suffused with a pale golden glow that spread from the west. A couple of early stars glittered in the east, and Venus shone with a steady gleam in the wake of the lowering sun.
‘You’re going to read me a bedtime story, are you?’ Joe gently stroked Nora’s soft black hair.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want you to read to me.’
‘You do, do you?’ Joe said lightly. ‘What have you got there?’ He took the open book that Nora reached to him and flicked the cover over. ‘J.M. Synge.’
‘Yes. Poor Synge,’ Nora said sadly. ‘He was thirty-five when he fell in love with a girl of nineteen, an actress called Molly All good, the daughter of a “Dour Orangeman” who objected to his children’s being brought up…
excerpt
When she recovered from her grief over Danny, Sarah accepted a
teaching post at Corkum in the northern part of the province. But
her tenure there was short lived. In the spring of 1942, Mrs. Roberts
suffered a stroke. Sarah applied for a leave-of-absence to take care
of her mother during her convalescence. But Mrs. Roberts never
did convalesce satisfactorily, and Sarah was forced to admit that her
mother had won. For five years Sarah found herself tied to the neat
brick house in Tillsonburg – nursing, cooking, cleaning, gardening
and doing everything except that for which she had been trained.
Apart from trips to the store to purchase their meagre supplies,
Sarah went nowhere. She saw no one except Margaret and Elizabeth
and, since the former was preoccupied with wedding plans
and the latter was nursing in a hospital in Toronto, she didn’t even
see much of them. Visitors to the Roberts’ home were few because it
hadn’t taken Mrs. Roberts long after her husband’s death to alienate
almost all of their friends.
There was no hope of meeting a man. The veterans began to
drift back to town when the war ended, some with brides, some to
the sweethearts they had left behind. But even the unattached ones
seemed to have forgotten that Sarah existed, or maybe they still regarded
her as Danny’s girl. Soon, almost all of the young men had
married or had drifted off again to more promising venues.
When her mother died Sarah applied for teaching posts but the
school year had already started and a shortage of teachers was a
thing of the past. She had been out of the profession for more than
five years, as had most of the teachers who were now returning to
it. But ex-servicemen and women were, naturally, given preference
over someone who had been caring for a sick parent.
On a grey, cold day in October, three weeks after her mother’s
death, Sarah sat dumbfounded in the office of Roger Corbett, her
parents’ lawyer. She was trying to understand what he had just said
but she felt too numb to take it in.
“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Mr. Corbett continued, “I wish there was
something I could do. Twice during the past year I went to see her,
as you know. And I went specifically to suggest that she change her
will. But she acted as if she didn’t understand what I was talking
about.”
THURSDAY
I saw her die many times
sometimes crying in my arms
sometimes in a stranger’s arms
sometimes alone, naked;
in this way, she lived with me.
Now I know, at last, that nothing exists further
and I wait.
If I grieve, it is my personal matter
like the feelings for simple things as these
and as they say we have gone beyond them;
and yet I’m still sorry because
I too never became (who I wished I would)
like the grass that I heard sprouting
near a pine tree at night;
because I didn’t follow the sea
another night when the water receded
gently drinking its own bitterness
and I never understood, when I groped the damp seaweed,
how much honour remains in the man’s hands
All these went by, slowly and conclusively
like the barges with their faded names
HELEN OF SPARTA, TYRANNOS, GLORIA MUNDI
they went by under the bridges beyond the chimneys
with two stooping men at the prow and the stern
naked to the waist
they went by, I can’t discern anything, in the morning fog
the sheep curled and ruminating were hardly visible
neither does the moon, over the river
that waits;
just seven spears plunged in the water
stagnant and without blood
and sometimes on the flagstones solemnly lit
under the cross-eyed tower
painted with red and yellow pencil
the Nazarene showing his wound.
‘Don’t throw your hearts to the dogs.
Don’t throw your hearts to the dogs.’
Her voice sinks with the stroke of the clock;
your will, I sought your will.
Manolis Aligizakis 