EMPTY NATURE (1993)
For Rodney
on our thirty years together
OESTRUS OF DEATH
They turned the fear of death into the oestrus of their lives
~Andreas Empiricos
I
The spastic woman lost control
and the carriage like an animal bridled by pain
dashed screeching wildly.
Soon after
like sudden nausea
the memory of the real body
came back to her
and the unfortunate woman
restarted going almost joyous
on her small wheels.
Opposite, wrapped in the rosy hues
of the gray time
the house where Thrush was born.
Ah, but first I have to describe
the reef to which I swam:
its shape, the chaki color
reminded me of a backpack
like the ones which eons ago we filled
with the sandwiches of youth.
I kept on closing to the reef
helped by the waters
with their light-blue blouses
that had painted on their blouses cypresses
from the cemetery of the opposite shore.
The beautiful temptation had overtaken me:
to not ever return again
to close the underwater cycle
— neckless of unimaginable value —
around my neck.
As I swam farther out
— I slowly ripped the fabric of the sea —
I kicked drawn loves that surfaced
I kicked them back to lay
down on their weed beds.
Then I questioned myself
if I had truly desired
those acceptable shapes
of the desirable, something
between the subjected body
and the empty talk…
Eros is the only godly glance
that might fall on us
the unbelievers, I would say.
Yet, look, how the sea with the blue
eyelids arouses me now
I’m lasciviously scared
and I float on ditch water
not knowing where it takes me
because I step
the invisible side of lust:
death.
Manolis 