Haste
Still too early to choose our new path
yet we headed to the open door
of the morgue into which
we’d identify our dead relatives as
people hid their money in worn out
mattresses, finger pointed at the scale,
lone feather on one side of it
his heart on the other, when the speechless
Hades with no hesitation scribed
accurate weight of his soul
representing size of coffin wherein
its eternal beauty would finally fit
Agianapa II
Verses for music
Under the old sycamore
wildly the wind played
with the birds with the branches
but never spoke to us.
Welcome, breath of my soul
we opened our hearts
come inside come and drink
from our desire.
Under the old sycamore
the wind got up and left
to the castles of the north and never touched us.
Oh my thyme and rosemary hold your breast tightly
and find cave and find a den
and hide your oil lamp.
This isn’t wind of Palm Sunday
it isn’t of the Resurrection
but it’s wind of fire and smoke
and of the joyless life
Under the old sycamore
dry the wind returned
it sniffed gold coins everywhere
and it sold us out.
THE GATE
(Excerpt 7)
I wait for the three women, and the fourth one;
they might not come; I wait for them;
the bicycle is in the basement
the chicken walked in the shop with the big saw;
the man grabbed it by the leg; the chicken cawed
I don’t know whether all saws have the same number
of teeth like people;
I wait, I didn’t give up, didn’t cross my arms,
oh, my old women, my old women, he said,
you who burned your two feathers one by one
over the flame of the oil lamp or the fire of the hearth
not in the fire of half of the city — the bone inside
still whole
to poke your back, so you’ll graze like runaway mares
oh the nights, with the mid-night cries of the dead,
the howls of dogs and wolves,
with the scratched skin of the moon nailed on doors
with the mirror, the glass door, the river, all angry
in the pitch dark
that we couldn’t notice the severed head of your son
in the laundry basket;
you’ll freeze at dawn — moist eaves stuck on your
soles
thistle poked through your dresses, entangled in
your hair
when the first explosions are heard in the gorge
and the statue tumbles as his testicles stir and
the mule drivers carry double sacks of whitewash
on their mules
marking the path with two white lines up to the
hill
high up by the half built church with the half
given forgiveness weighing heavy the olive grove
with what the bells didn’t chime.
The others, still shuffling the cards, argued about
various scenarios;
I left their company, sat by the window; I wasn’t
listening to their complains,
Council
Battles after battles — you got tired. Then, stay here
just before the end. Forget. Close your eyes go deep
inside
to the other, benevolent darkness. Then, get up to chisel,
in the rock, beautiful images for the last time, like those on
the shield of Achilles.
yet, look and choose the most insignificant — the heralds,
for example, tired under the oak trees; the soldiers preparing
supper;
the king leaning silently on his sceptre; a youth coming down
the hill yelling — his open mouth with no voice. Women sit
by their front steps gazing at the faraway distance or deep
within themselves with a sweet smile of forgiveness that
this day has passed too and the concern of the house and
the laundry — the cloths are washed and ironed and placed
in the drawer; the broom resting behind the door too; the
water pitchers are full; the oil lamp is hanging on a nail
off the wall; under the table its shadow is like a gigantic
black dog, which doesn’t wag its tail; the evening star on
the right corner of the sky — then, they can look, without
any grumbling or regret, at the flowers in the garden,
the windowpanes that have caught fire or the pretty girls
and boys who dance in the square sometimes in lines
opposite each other, sometimes in quick circular movements,
like the potter turns his wheel when he tries it.
This scene, leave it for last — is has to be last — you know,
the dance of the young men, because tomorrow will come
the big celebration of the dead — friends and enemies. And
again the voyage with Helen totally covered in her silver
peplums.
THREE TEARS OF THE LORD
II
This mountain so close to me
I extend my hand and uproot
the trees and its shrubs
the electrical company’s poles
these hurting teeth
of a desperately lonely life
Crafty sheep run on it
are sheep ever crafty?
yet these ones have hurt a lot
and have learned inhumane bleats
Here the people became one with the stones
they strike the stones and rip their viscera
they surprise themselves, they don’t know how to cry
Today
look carefully at this mountain
look carefully at this tear of the Lord
because it will dry up by tomorrow
Tomorrow you won’t be able to see anything.
Painting by Tineke Storteboom
I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.
Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea —
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.
Sara Teasdale, USA (1884 – 1933
ΣΕ ΘΥΜΗΘΗΚΑ
Σε θυμήθηκα και πόσο λάτρευες αυτή την ομορφιά
καθώς βαδίζοντας μόνος στον έρημο γιαλό
πρόσεξα τον ήχο των κυμάτων που έσπαζαν άηχες βροντές
σαν κάποτε που το μονόλογο αυτό ακούσαμε μαζί.
Γύρο μου ο απόηχος της αμμουδιάς, πέρα μακριά
τ’ ασήμι της λαμπερής και κρύας θάλασσας.
Χρόνια πολλά και θάνατος πρόκειται να περάσουν
ώσπου την ηχώ αυτή να ξανακούσουμε μαζί.
Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη//Translated by Manolis Aligizakis
THEODOTOS
If you are truly one of the chosen,
look carefully at how you gain your power.
No matter how much you are glorified, no matter
how loudly the cities in Italy and Thessaly
praise your achievements, no matter
how many decrees in your honor
are issued by your admirers in Rome,
neither your joy nor your triumph will last,
and how superior—what does it mean superior?
are you going to feel, when in Alexandria, Theodotos
brings you, on a blood-stained tray
the head of a despondent Pompeius.
And don’t content yourself with the fact
that in your banal, restrained, and regulated life
such phenomenal and terrifying things don’t happen.
Perhaps at this hour Theodotos—invisible, fleshless—
enters the well-ordered house of your neighbor
carrying such a hideous head.
OCEAN’S MARCH (Excerpt XI)
In the girls’ glances the echo
of a big morning forest shivers
in musical limpidity
and trust
But as the serene houses wave
to us tenderly
with the stooping acacia on the white wall
the flash of the great sea
will come among us
to win us over once again
Eh captain
eat your dried-up bread quickly
and the black olive
dipped in salt and in the sun
over the vertical rock
THE POET
I had fallen in the depths of the black
hopelessness of the nightmare catalyst
in the heat of summer, the sad and sorrowful
deathly low note of the dreamscape
I had neglected my fate in my slumber
for years. Yet verse and rhythm were never absent
and I had climbed up to where the fount existed
where science said I had it and for this I climbed.
Because I had lost the regular,
the inspirer of dreams, the world’s prophet,
the spontaneous poet who leans on clouds
the great, the holy rhythm interpreter.
Repetitions, Series III
Our Life in Phares
After all the misfortunes we became very superstitious.
We pay attention to the shadows of birds and leaves
we hear unheard off sounds, we step back,
late in the dusk, on tiptoes, we enter the temple
we burn incense on the altar, we fill the lamps with oil,
we place our bronze coin offering on the altar
we near the god’s ear and whispering we ask: “when?”,
“from where?” “with what?” And then we seal our ears
shut and leave. When we reach out to the marketplace,
we unseal our ears at once — the first word we hear
is the answer of the god. That word is never the one
we wished to hear, perhaps we misheard. Then again
we restart the same tedious process — the temple,
the candles, our bronze coin offering and the marketplace
up to the hour that the stores close, they turn off
the lamps, and we, alone in the street, walk along
the walls, perusing that word letter by letter, reversing
the syllables, without ever reaching that which we prefer.
Thus, as you say, we spend our lives now in Phares
between the deserted marketplace and the inauspicious
oracles.
Manolis Aligizakis 