In The Name of the Goddess I Summon You

Oil on limbs

perhaps a rancid smell

like here on the oil-press

of the small church

on the rough pores

of the stopped stone.

Oil on the hair

crowned with rope,

and perhaps other perfumes

that we didn’t know

poor and rich

and statuettes offering

small breasts to the fingers.

Oil in the sun

the leaves shivered

when the foreigner stopped

and silence got heavy

between the knees.

The coins fell;

‘In the name of the Goddess I summon you…’

Oil on the shoulders

and the flexing waist

gray legs on the grass,

and this wound in the sun

as the bell chimed for vespers

as I spoke in the courtyard

with a crippled man.

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Pleas of the Children

                              “The houses should not burn.
                               Bombers one should not know.
                                The night should be for sleep.
                              Life should not be a punishment
                                     mothers should not cry
                                  No οne should kill anyone
                            Everybody should built something
                              where one could trust the other.
                                 The young should achieve it.
                                        The old as well.“

Bertolt Brecht, Germany (1898 –1956)

ΕΚΛΗΣΕΙΣ ΤΩΝ ΠΑΙΔΙΩΝ

Να μην πυρπολούνται τα σπίτια

να μην γνωρίζει κανείς τα βομβαρδιστικά

η νύχτα να `ναι για τον ύπνο

να μην είναι τιμωρία η ζωή

οι μάνες να μην κλαίνε

κανείς να μην σκοτώνει κανένα

ο καθένας να χτίζει κάτι

εκεί που εμπιστεύεται ο ένας τον άλλο.

Οι νέοι να το καταφέρουν

κι οι γέροι επίσης.

Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη/Translated by Manolis Aligizakis

REPETITIONS SECOND SERIES

Septirhea and Daphnephoria

We said: this year we’ll stay here. Enough of the stupid

           trips.

Man’s only wisdom: loneliness. Therefore why we now

run, in the night, with torches, stumbling on rocks, not

           knowing

the meaning of such thoughtless symbolisms — the putting up

           of the wooden shack

the secret procession with a child up front, the arrow that’s

           nailed to the door,

after the burning of the shack, people running to the Tempe

without turning their heads back not even once. And after

          the sacrifices

we turn back loaded with oleander branches. The same and

the same every nine years (perhaps so we might forget in

          between, and truly we forget). Eh, no,

this time we don’t take a step — thus we said. But when

          we heard

the faraway nightly drums and the torch bearers passing

          noiselessly in front of the house,

we couldn’t stop ourselves, we all ran to the road, mixed

          with the people,

we took part in the fires, the running, the sacrifices and

returned through the Pythian Road towards Delphi, past

          midnight, holding

oleander branches although we didn’t have (for years now)

          anyone to crown —

and this was a sadness together with pride that no one knew

although they all considered us theirs. The shack was

still smoking at dawn. Returning home, we gazed at

the sky, clear, milky, light-blue, rosy; we noticed on the soil

the tumbled little paper flags, a child’s sandal, a kerchief with

          sperm;

we looked in a serene, ecstatic way, with certain vague

          politeness and nausea

with the happy tiredness and the blindness of the nightly

          vigil,

like actors who took their make-up off, at the end of a nice

presentation, who leave retaining their sleepy hearing,

the futile buzz of the clapping and some bother, as some

gum is retained on their chins, from the graceful beard of

Oedipus or Prometheus, which they had put on for one

          more night.

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