Autumnal The big leaves fall. The sea is angry. The guard sheltered himself behind the wall so he could light his cigarette. Whatever was to be said by the cloud, the man, the broken car was at the mercy of the wind. Hou, houou, my children under the soil, old women come with dead dogs, with steel, the sewing machines are asleep inside the empty houses, the newspaper is caught on the thorns. Ohou, my children, you walked a lot. I must buy you new shoes. I brought the most beautiful woman, there in front of the lamppost. When the lights are turned on, you’ll see her gathering the black buttons of your coats off the street, the ones cut off by that wild distant irreversible gesture.
Time accepts me I experience the attraction of the bodies around me, the breath of open windows, the challenging night trains, the asphalt warn out by speed, the raging water, waterfalls, avalanches, twists in the scenes. Time accepts me holding me tightly in its dry palm and takes me through ages as if they were a Friday. Love is my everyday clothes, my free bloodstream, otherwise this body wouldn’t have any breath, glimpse, thought, rhythm, molecules – I feel it weighs me down – it travels in its dreams and how far it goes where no wing has fluttered and how childishly it strides in infinity in the then, in the there, and the will be, shrouded in a moment of dismay.
The heavenly fights descend to the ground and Death returns to earth the place of its origin. Bright flashes accompany Him the only luxury left to the corpses. Truly, how evil has changed direction! The actions of Death commenced down in the mud, in the hooves of the animals the boots, the bog, then He climbed to the black clouds and into the innocent souls. And now in the desert that I imagine with innumerable rosy and sandy breasts that breathe as they near death, secretive body with its dark oasis hidden here and there uncommitted, like spectator of perdition He became a parachutist to conquer. Now the progress of bloody flesh exists from top to bottom. The sky, a fiery past that will be forgotten and good will be established on earth, it will be buried deep, very deep in memory.
Mu I evaluated the weights and measures of the world and found them unjust wrongly made and unthankful lacking the whiteness of a home black stigmata on the wrong side of the scale, the means used by the money changer and the banker measures of the embezzler against the sunlit noon of June and the sanctified bed sheets of the newlyweds and I said, one day, new laws will replace them and firm directions will be put in place when Hades shows his face and their means become useless measures and weighs, unjust and wrongly made like the echo of a coin falling on a shiny pan I evaluated the modern morals, shiny, glittering and sexy bodies and consumer goods that turns youngsters into numbers and consciousness into a desolate desert and I found them dark and horrible and spreading my glance over the horizon into the unknown future, I saw destruction and wars, hunger and ugliness, and I saw the bank accounts of the few getting richer and other people’s earnings becoming meagre and I said, The ineffable had other plans for people on this earth, while the ego and greediness of the selected has changed the planet’s route towards its destruction I evaluated the minds and hearts of the populace and thought of filling them with love, tolerance, pride, and respect for the neighbourhood thieves and for the ambitions of the enemy to balance the imbalance I saw everywhere
“mother, I’m looking for the house”, I say to her, “ok then”, she says to me, “put it on top of the side table and I’ll take care of it”, the stoa was just lit, the woman with her back in the side street; my brother didn’t like the sound of bells nor her cheap cotton pitiful panties, like the poor person’s song; the dog was crying during the night and wanted to rub himself on a ghost; the small room vanished in all this, the sign pendulated in the air, girls with makeup reigned over the stairway, untie Amalia, fearful of God, handled the cartons almost perfectly and was often lost without any trace however without ever reaching the beautiful dimmed icons; it was a very dark night at Hagia Petroupolis; the man with the music instrument stopped outside the café, “you’re hurting me” she said to him along with a bunch of new stories narrated in low tone voice in the tailor shops. Grant me, my Lord, a ripped page in every book and this way I walked bravely like the corner of a house at dawn or a woman who, with her breasts, pushes sleep aside or the hands of the blind man conniving with the fog. I could, truly, narrate a lot of stories but I’m thinking to what end since even the most innocent word is unfortunately a goodbye repeated a thousand times just before the accident and the server spat in the coffee so he could double his wages; sleep with ravaged musical notes, a mix up of dead keys children’s letters to God thrown carelessly onto the ground and the drunk man walks awkwardly not to step on them.
Another week went by in the usual office routines and house routines, but when Saturday night came around, Eteo experienced another first in his relationship with Ariana. He took her for dinner to La Pergola in Richmond, where they dined on prosciutto and other special salamis and antipasti, with the restaurant’s special bigoli pasta as the main course, a rare dish in Vancouver that only this restaurant offered. They also had an excellent bottle of Chianti, which perfectly complemented the pasta and grated parmigiana. Ariana was as familiar with pasta dishes as Eteo, but this bigoli was unique and she exclaimed in delight when she tasted it. “I’ve never tasted pasta this good, and we use pasta a lot in our cuisine,” she said with a big grin on her face. They were on the patio, birdsong all around them, and the food, the wine, and the ambience made them both jolly and content. Above them, in the heights of the firmament, a billion stars seemed to reflect their jolly mood, dancing their twinkling celestial dance in the midst of the great void. “I haven’t been here for a long time, but their food is still …
Shiny new ones from Germany and Japanese ones with colourful markings. He began to wonder if he had the wrong hotel. Just when he considered giving up, maybe returning tomorrow, he saw her coming. She was a long way off, walking, not from the direction of the Hotel Rossiya, but from the direction of Red Square. As she got closer, he could see that she was laughing and happy. His heart gave a little lurch and she approached him quickly, still smiling. Wonder of wonders, she was apologizing to him: “Sorry I’m late. We’re not staying at this hotel after all. We were taken to the Hotel Bucharest, way over there. I walked across a bridge…” “Da, da, da,” was all he could think of to say, nodding and smiling in return. This was superb! Recovering slightly from his daze, Sergey linked arms with her like a sweetheart and they walked around the block, while Sergey ran through his various shopping lists. She interrupted several times to tell him that she hadn’t seen such an item or there was a good supply of the other. Eventually he gave her all the foreign money, which turned out to be $45 American dollars, a few pounds sterling and some West German marks, and she disappeared into the store. “Ech, you dope,” Sergey muttered. “You could have offered her a drink or an ice cream from the stand…” Once more he waited, this time choosing a different street corner, next to the GUM department store. He could shop at GUM himself later. The way he calculated it, shopping for goods like vodka and brandy at the foreign currency store would save him money because everyone knew items for tourists were at least four times cheaper than in their Russian stores—that is if you could find them in the Russian stores. Also, it would give him lots of time to procure out of stock goods elsewhere. The difference would probably pay for his wanton taxi ride plus maybe an evening at the restaurant…with Lona. Guiltily, he realized that he had been in Moscow for three hours and hadn’t thought once of Nadya, his sister. He should telephone her; she had a phone installed recently and he had the new number. There was a pay phone across the way, but the receiver hung uselessly. Some one had placed a sign “Not Working” and it looked as if the sign had been there for months. There would be public telephone booths at the telegraph office in back of the hotel and they would be in good working order. He slipped over there to make his call.
Impact And since the new reality was upon us we truly accepted it: our God was dead. Buried him yesterday afternoon with no songs, no paeans, nor lamentations and we felt a lot lighter. Nothing was as ticklish as the mood of the somber day while fear, I’d say, was hidden deep in our hearts. Sorrow reigned in the black funeral home while beggars, outside, stretched their hands asking for what we couldn’t spare: decency of the new serpent who appeared without fangs, feverish magnolia bloomed its purple flowers over our nuptial bed and in an eyrie we filled our chalice with courage and shipped it to the four corners of the universe and promised never to be trapped again in the idiocy of a system. The Andean condor we declared heir of the flesh the wind and the rain we proclaimed our catharsis evoe, oh, free elements, evoe multiply and conquer the earth someone said and it was good
Humble Ode They have no voice: things that return to their sleep, their eyes bloodied by time insignificant shipwrecks in the bottom of color, rise now in a multitude of colors. However, I am dead since my birth, already dead, talking to you: monsters that frighten me with death I know you harmless house pets you willingly become crumbs in a myth you don’t have history, and you scold the agony of people and their spontaneous love. Cheap shadows, excrements of wild imagination what do you seek in a causeless world? Indifferent, homeless cowards what do we seek in the horrible deserts of our vision?
FIRST VERSES I like to read your letter over and cry and with my eyes lingering on every line to see you still warm, still remembering when we said we’d be forever one, remembering the days we ran with one another to where nightingales sang seductively the day that I remember when you said I feel an ache here in my heart before the cough arrived to stop your words
Manolis Aligizakis 