The White Horse

Further from the grapevines was the yellow field

there, under the eucalyptus, an all-white horse,

in its sealed snow whiteness, was gazing faraway

at something white, needed, invisible. The shadow

of the horse seemed light-blue on the sunburn grass,

so much so, that the voices of the harvesters took

a light-blue hue with golden stigmata.

Next year, in the summer, in the same spot, as

they dug to create a water well they discovered

three same statues all white like that horse which

vanished one night.

Harold Norse, Οι θείοι μου

Poem by Kostas Karyotakis

AS I DIE

In the relaxed time of the vernal twilight, my wounded soul,

what futile effort as you’ll fold your wings

when redemption you’ll long for something

poor soul, forever sad and desperate

when you reach the end of your line you’ll find

hatred and love, passions and vile always vanish

when the disappointment, like myrrh rises

from the exquisite flowers of life, my dreamy soul

that special moment when with a simple smile

you’ll remember enemies and friends

futile soul what will you say to the sea and to the wind,

my closed heart, when you stand opposite the pale dusk?

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TRANSLATING THE END OF LIFE TO EROS

Since I can’t touch you

with my tongue

I transliterate my passion.

I can’t take you as communion

and I denature you

I can’t undress you

and I dress you with imagination

of an allophone language.

I can’t cuddle under your wings

and I fly around you turning

the pages of your vocabulary. 

I want to know how you denude

yourself, how you are reborn

and for this I search for

your habits between your lines

the fruits you love

the smells you prefer

the girls you read as if turning pages.

I’ll never see your nude signs

so I work hard on your adjectives

that I recite them in an allophone language.

Yet my story became too old

my tome doesn’t adorn any shelf

and now I imagine you leather-bound

in a foreigner’s bookcase.

Since it was never allowed

to let myself in the nonsense of nostalgia

and write this poem, I read

the gray sky in a sunlit translation.

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Σταύρος Βαβούρης, Η Κλυταιμνήστρα στην Αυλίδα

Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Now

pieces of the great incomparable dream we

once held

are taken away from us

warm parts of lost glories

wedged in our nails, go rotten, our hands swell,

hurt; they steal them from us while we sleep,

to the arms…

and we sang all together, hoped all together

and fell all together

the squares were full of gestures and visions

as we kneeled over our dead, you could say,

a piece of the earth was sinking, the coffins

floated in the air raised up by the sudden

wind of our songs;

to the arms…

And the defeated soldiers walked along

the indifferent roads, children put their tongues out

while the soldiers laughed for a moment

a vague distant laughter, as if they see for

the first time how beautiful life is.

Or sometimes, burdensome, they lift a stone

and throw it far away

in the space to the direction that perhaps Fate

passes. And they keep on walking in the spring

warmish light taking off their boots, their bags,

their clothes and staying naked,

full of lice, silence and lunacy of continuance

             inside them.

The defeated soldiers, the defeated soldiers

have the sorrow of immenseness.

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Δημητρός Ζαχαριάδης – Τὸ ἔργον τοῦ Νίτσε

THE BRIDGE

Indeed, the halves of the hour are strange; especially for

           those who are asleep

and have lost count of time; and more so for those who

are awake and count. The half hours maintain that

vague half that seeks its supplement and are conscious

of being half; and they’re conscious of the vague

other half, in the previous or the after, always in

            the beyond and the outside;

strange, indeed are the half hours — they’re a suspended

perhaps loud 1 ½, 2 ½, 3 1/2 . Perhaps, and a perhaps

that sounds like a slash in the wholeness of time,

a sensitive, metallic pulse; a vibration like the thin blade

of a stiletto thrust in the middle of a bull’s forehead

like that sharp knife which whizzing through the dark

void is nailed in a closed door. 

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Routine

Often you said we needed

to change our habits

a new beginning to commence

a new purpose to seek

help to discover hope

and its elements

while all along

you remained resting

in lush recliner

and always you upheld

your beliefs while

tightly in hand

you held

the recliner’s lever

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Aristoxenus (c.375-335 BCE)…