“…εν τούτοισι και ο Σιληνός τοίσι κήποισι ήλω, ως λέγεται υπό Μακεδόνων. υπέρ δέ των κήπων όρος κείται Βέρμιον ούνομα, άβατον υπό χειμώνος. ενθεύτεν δέ ορμώμενοι, ως ταύτην έσχον, κατεστρέφοντο και την άλλην Μακεδονίην”.
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Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Childhood Memory
During the summer siesta when the adults sleep, a bucket
of water tumbles down the stairway onto the hallway tiles.
At that moment, and under the hallway, at the same spot
where the bucket emptied, a fresh, forgotten for years,
storage room appears. Birds with their violins roost in there,
the linen kerchiefs, starched napkins of old tidiness,
two broken chairs, a basket of grapes, a pair of red
sandals, a high glass, the chalk, the school bell, the young
woodworker who saws the big stairway of the cicada.
Soon a light breeze starts blowing from in there wrinkling
part of the sea and the forehead of poetry with that
neglected, funny, childish frowning.
Teaching
And Themis was put in a dark dungeon
while I faced my kin’s delirious eyes
yet, though I had much to say,
I kept silent, momentarily, to give
time to their simple-mindedness
bubbling along with the creek’s murmur
innocent smile of child upon which
I entrusted my hope to rediscover justice
with spring flowers rejuvenating
the veins of impeccable Eros
my distraught friends remained imprisoned
and I, dressed in rags, walked over the lands,
and being soft-spoken and with new symbols
with new follies and new anecdotes,
I tried to revert the beliefs of
new Judases born with sharpened teeth
ready to devour each other
nothing to leave for the winds
the rightful inheritors of my teachings
SHAPE OF ABSENCE XXV
The distance lengthened between hands. People in love
don’t join hands anymore, not to reveal their lonely frost,
afraid that
the cry of absence might be heard from their joined hands.
They remain like that
as if in a dark tunnel gazing the opposite time
or the distant, vacant tables
that have changed shape and place to a solid silence.
Only
the alarm clock on the night table,
like the eye of an adult that has grown before its time,
shows a familiar time, unapproachable, already outdated;
and slowly-slowly death withers
like a unused forgiveness.
POEM BY IOULITA ILIOPOULOS
CITY OF MUSIC
Small, multicolored musical squares
cobblestoned, where you step and
new sounds break up in the air
one night wearing a petticoat
and with a green dome on its hair
the night that turned into dawn
a band of light you passed over me
and closing my eyes as if feathers
a yellow night that turns into salinity
the river drop by drop
persistently persistent little lights like kisses
in her tiny hands as if of a marionette
a crypt, a fan, a voice
climbing slowly up in the air
and the elongated verdure on the ground
caresses as if silence, in a huge café where
the sounds go around in circles.
Trays with small glasses and sweets, gold signs
—which truth do the clocks count? —
music, you say.
A pink hydrangea and through the open window
a big heater made of porcelain and in very small letters
Salzburg of the nineteen hundred forever
Στη διάρκεια του χειμώνα του 343/2 ο Αριστοτέλης βρισκόταν στη Μυτιλήνη, διδάσκοντας, ερευνώντας και παρακολουθώντας τις περσικές δραστηριότητες στην Τρωάδα, όταν έφτασε η πρόσκληση του Φιλίππου. Θα δεχόταν – με αντάλλαγμα μια δεόντως υψηλή αμοιβή – να επιστρέψει στη Μακεδονία και να αναλάβει τη θέση του προσωπικού παιδαγωγού του Αλεξάνδρου;
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Scarecrow
He knew our peculiar desire for suffering, He knew
we preferred the sighs of defeated and those left
by the birds in their morning flight, though our soft
eardrums were unable to capture the thunderbolt’s
rapture, we still wanted to lie next to the woman’s
breast, close enough to feel her pain, close enough
to taste salinity of her skin and He, alone, encompassed
the earth seen by our irises His primal goal to transcend
our desires once and for all, while we still kneeled
before the scarecrow, jet-black eyes and straw hair
on his head that moved from side to side, myths upon
which we had based our existence.
WAR CALENDAR
13th DAY or ON LAND NOW
The air fights descend to the ground
and death returns to earth
the place of its origin.
Bright flashes accompanied 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
as I imagine it with innumerable
rosy sandy breasts
that breath as they near death
secretive body
with the dark oasis hidden here and there
uncommitted, like spectator of perdition
that became a parachutist to conquered her.
Now from top to bottom
the progress of bloody flesh;
the sky, the fiery past
will be forgotten
and good will be established on earth
it will be buried deep, very deep in memory.
Mathios Paskalis Among the Roses
I’ve been smoking steadily since morning
if I stop the roses will embrace me
with thorns and fallen petals they will choke me
they grow crookedly, all of them with the same rose color
they stare; they wait to see someone; no one goes by
behind the smoke of my pipe I watch them
being scentless over a weary stem
in the other life a woman told me ‘you can touch this hand
and this rose is yours it’s yours you can take it
now or later, whenever you like’
I walk down the steps smoking still,
the roses walk down with me, excitedly
and in their manner they have something of the voice
at the root of a scream, there where the man
starts shouting ‘mother’ or ‘help’
or the small white words of love.
It’s a small garden full of roses
a few square meters descending with me
as I go down the steps, without sky;
and her aunt would tell her ‘Antigone you forgot your exercises today
at your age I never wore a corset, not in my time’.
Her aunt was of pitiful stature with veins in relief
many wrinkles around her ears an almost dead nose
but her words were always full of wisdom.
I saw her one day touching Antigone’s breast
like a small child stealing an apple.
Perhaps I’ll meet that woman now as I walk down?
When I left she said to me ‘who knows when we’ll meet again’
and then I read about her death in old newspapers
about Antigone’s marriage and Antigone’s daughter’s marriage
the steps down and my smoking without end
that leaves on my lips the taste of a haunted ship
with a mermaid crucified to the wheel while she was still beautiful.
Manolis Aligizakis 