POEM BY MARIA POLYDOURI

MY SONGS WERE ONLY WRITTEN FOR HIM

Why do I need to accept the Muse’s projection?

That I tighten my heart and accept

new loves, beliefs and joys

as if it was my Fate’s doing and so exceptional?

Time has passed since the rayed spark of my eye

shone onto the holy and the mortal.

Oh, I haven’t kept the senseless lyre of passion

since my songs were only written for Him.

And I sang the grief of my pure soul

along with the sad joy of tears

and all the joy of my song was nothing but his voice

that I’d hear one evening in front of his humble dwelling.

And as sometime I read my joy in his eyes

what more valuable opinion can I state?

At our separation like swallows the verse brought

to him the message: even from faraway twice I love him.    

And now my voice leaves not any grieving echo

as it’s covered by the darkness of the night

yet everyone is afraid and I still believe

that I’ve reached the heavy gate of Hades.

For why would I accept the call of Muse when

my trust on gods and people shuttered inside me?

A senseless Lyre of passion doesn’t suit me

since my songs were only written for Him.

‘Karyotakis-Polydouri: The Tragic Love Story’ poetry translated by Manolis Aligizakis

CRAFTSMAN OF WINE BOWLS

On this wine bowl,    made of pure silver 

for the house of Heracleidis,

where excellent taste    reigns—

look, here are elegant flowers    and streams and thyme,

and in the middle I placed    a beautiful young man,

naked, erotic;    he still has one of his calves

in the water—.    I prayed, Oh Memory,

to find you as my best    helper, so that I might make

the face of the young man    I loved as it was.

It was very difficult though    as it has been

almost fifteen years   since the day

he fell, a soldier,    in the defeat at Magnesia.

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MARCHING PAEANS

The stars go crazy and spume

like the soldier who had

an epileptic attack during the exercises.

Was it true or he pretended?

However he didn’t escape the exercises

by going to the camp hospital.

We shall never escape if we get sick or die.

I wanted to say this to the man next to me

but he kept on singing marching paeans.

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POEM BY GEORGE DOUATZIS

WASTE

Easily we waste

the most valuable:

water, blood

like losses

that build the smallest room

in which I live

and as I grow older

the room turns smaller

until it becomes a small dot

lost in the space

of a mindless world

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VIOLIN FOR THE ONE-ARM MAN

3

However something worse happened: I had to be in

the hallway at regular times; there was a vague accusation

            without any witnesses,

without proofs, almost without a victim;

besides, haven’t I been under uninterrupted surveillance

for years otherwise what would I need all these

            windows?

They were coming in the house each night and that explains

            all the floor creaking

a mysterious murder by the many things that had fallen

            off your hands,

doors you opened hastily or perhaps auntie Eudoxia, who

applied make up at her old age and if you made fun of her

she would go to the side and cry silently, since then I owe

           her all the tears

or that fake coin you threw in the hat of the blind, perhaps

he exchanged it with his whole hand,

or my childhood friend with who each evening we divided

          the world; though I always cheated him

as I waited to be called “it’s my turn” I begged them

although, even here, someone else would take my place;

“there is no skylight” someone said and I calmed him

down “there is one since you’re lost” I said to him;

every so often people opened the door and looked

          at me until blood appeared;

finally they took me “name please”, “assholes, pigs”

I said to them “if I didn’t have a name I wouldn’t be

here”, “and how did you kill your father?”

“I, my father?” But when I started recalling I suddenly

understood how mysterious my past was “they fooled me”

I yelled “someone else lived my life”

           then the next witness came in,

the wretched man, who accused me of debauchery “pity”

I said to him “I was the one who took off my cloths and

covered the gallows so you wouldn’t see it”

and as evening came they brought big candlesticks

           from other eras

since those days I had no corpse to prepare for the night

until finally he appeared, the one who would be

responsible for my defence, as they said; I knew him

but didn’t remember accurately in which life I met him

“are you the distributor” I asked “no I’m the inheritor”

he says, such inexplicable words, perhaps to all who are

          afraid of words

and only after the murder you learn who you are.

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PLEASURE

Old age, serene, beyond joy or sorrow

beyond expectations. It evaluates its time without

impatience which it almost doesn’t consider; it loses

itself before a hornet that dives deep in its buzz,

before a glass with its clear circle floating in the air.

Quiet, endless period after the responsibility and 

the action, silent, sweet period, like a woman in bed,

a woman after an orgasm, who joyously weights

the soft heaviness of man’s genitals in her palm.

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POEM BY JOHN POLEMIS

MOTHERLAND

What is our motherland? Perhaps the plains

and snow-capped mountain peaks?
Is it perhaps the golden sun that shines upon her

or is it night’s innumerable bright stars?

Is it perhaps each of her shallow shores

and all her counties with their villages,

each landscape, every isle that distantly appears

on each one of her many seas?

Is it perhaps her ruined monuments,

the ancient temples crumbling in the sun,

yet decorated by her art’s immortal glory

that echoes everywhere you turn?

All these are our motherland. These and those

and what we have deep in our hearts

which unseen, like a sun ray, shines

and calls inside us: Let us march, my boys! 

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HORSE EYED WOMEN

And the three middle aged maids

those who make the erotic beds

who have never been loved

those with

the big teary horse eyes

forgotten in the snow

gathered in the maids room

like an ancient tragic chorus

in front of the propylaea

of a dirty sink

talk with such forbearance

that even the simplest words

from their bitter mouths

suddenly take the deep gleam

of the myths.

And they talk of their earnings

about the rain, dreams, regrets

and about all the different ways

one can cook potatoes

about the murders reported

in the newspapers, about emptying

the sewage tank and erasing death

and about the Resurrection

and all other eternal things. And

they talk and talk wishing to

exist in their words, while the deep

wrinkles in their faces resemble

furrows that time flows through

falling noiselessly

in eternity.

Those women with the tough, dirty

hands purified by the eternal offering.

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