THE INITIATE
The initiate dressed in white will always dwells in caves
and the oleanders will redden behind him
the pebbles sprinkled by the holy rain
the whole gorge that follows.
I also go near with my serpent-self
the estuary of passion.
My soles — the last lovers —
carry me lightly
as if I had no heaviness in my consciousness.
The one who attracts me stops, thin,
dressed in white and having a ponytail;
he smells a strong odor like devil rosemary
while he exhumes the beautiful fragrance of a dead angel.
The leafage of the carob-tree
hides something quivering and invisible
felt only by that quivering and invisible sense
that we have inside us.
The initiate is very thin;
His pants only balloon a little
in the front and a little in the back
as flesh air fills his shirt.
The sponsor of earth lowered me
with the unanswered questions in my tongue
to a cave that instead of a mouth
had a hole in the sky.
Under it stood
the provider of the inconceivable
with his palms turned upwards
he milked the light-blue.
He stirred a little;
was perhaps the unforeseen from above
that pushed him
or the earth, slave of precision
that shook him from his foundations?
He smiled with eyes, with teeth of metal
then I thought I had skipped
something very important before
time and day had given birth to me.
Thus I firstly asked about time
which passes by quickly these days
with wings that only have time
to caress me, the wilted one.
When you’re young — the translator
of the timeless explained to me —
you’re by nature satiated
as if you gorged yourself
in an extra rich meal.
Full of endless future
one hour seems as the whole feast
seasons have no end
eons separate fruits from snow
stodgy seconds sit heavy over the weeks.
The newly found body
isn’t about to get hungry
— truly how did they store so many
moments under the fresh skin? —
the newly recruited body
won’t get hungry anymore.
Only later, when the storage facility
starts to empty of life
and fills with insecurity
what is five years, you might say,
I didn’t even get their smell
while all along with more bulimia
you swallow the half-chewed mouth-fulls
from the leftovers of your time-portion.
We walked out of the cave
and we felt as reborn
as if made of stones and soil.
Half as a blessing half as a punishment
he wrapped my aged body with aroma.
Then I understood what I had skipped:
it doesn’t relate to my birth
but to a death I hadn’t mourned yet
a death that I hadn’t died yet.
Manolis Aligizakis 