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