Τα αρχαία ελληνικά πλοία

Ubermensch/Υπεράνθρωπος

Relatives

The stories I’ve heard

from relatives about endless

battles and heroics always

more powerful than the enemy’s

moulded me into the savior

of the world I wanted to become

though even my guardian angel

refused to hear my plea as

I paid attention to the stars

and since I was desperate

I was preparing for that day

when I could open my window

and salute the first swallow

while some prisoners stood

behind the barbed wire looking

towards my family home

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ORESTES (Excerpt)

I like this damp quietness. Somewhere close by, in a humble

house, a young woman is combing her long hair, and next

to her, her spread undies are breathing in the moonlight; all

of them flowing, slippery, happy. In the baths, water is poured

out of big urns onto the necks and breasts of young girls, the

small aromatic bars of soap slide onto the tiles; bubbles split

the sound of water and laughter; a woman slipped and fell;

everything slips because of the soap — you can’t hold

the bubbles nor can you get a hold of yourself — this slippage

is the reoccurring rhythm of life — women laugh and blow

the white, weightless, tiny towers of soap-bubbles from

the little forest of their mound. Isn’t this happiness?

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Poem by Manolis Aligizakis

DATE

Α blind date

is set for you by fate

to meet your Death

this morning

for this you smile

and tighten your lips

in agony

Bon voyage!

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ORESTES (Excerpt)

Sacrifices, they said, heroism — and for what change?

Years after years; perhaps we have come for this

little discovery of the great miracle that isn’t called

small or great, nor murder or sin.

Everything is Eros — magic and dazzle (as mother

used to say) when the big, fleshy leaves of the night

touch our foreheads and the fruit that falls is a certain,

undelivered message, like the circle, the triangle or

the rhombus. I think of a saw that rusts in a deserted

carpentry and the numbers of houses move away

to the horizon — 3, 7, 9, the innumerable number.

Listen. She stopped.

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Chun Woo, Korea

A Half Moon

Since when are you hanging there, half moon,
drifting palely in the sky?
The wind rises, the nightfall brings a chill,
and the edge of the white-water glitters in the glow of the evening.

Above the dark, grassless plain,
the cold fog rises.
The winter is far advanced,
and sorrow weighs me down.

Also in the heart of the beloved who leaves,
love and youth turned to age disappears.
At the dark branches of the wild bramble,
withered petals glimmer in the faint evening light.

Kim So-wôl, Korea (1902 – 1934)

Translation: Jaihiun J. Kim – Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley Barkan

                                             ΜΙΣΟΦΕΓΓΑΡΟ

Πόσο καιρό κρέμεσαι εκεί στον ουρανό

μισοφέγγαρο νωχελικά αργοπερνώντας;

Σηκώνεται ο αγέρας κι η ψύχρα της νύχτας σε παγώνει

άκρες νερού που λάμπουν μεσα στην εσπέρα

πάνω απ’ τον ολόξερο κάμπο

η ομίχλη αιωρείται

μες την καρδιά του χειμώνα

η λύπη με παιδεύει

και στην καρδιά που φεύγει της αγαπημένης

νειότης αγάπη που περνά και χάνεται

στα σκοτεινά κλαδιά αγριολυγιάς

και λάμπουν φύλλα πέταλα μέσα στο φως εσπέρας

Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη//translated by Manolis Aligizakis

Poem by Manolis Aligizakis

WHAT IF

If you didn’t get to the train station

at that exact time you wouldn’t

have met him you wouldn’t have

started dating you wouldn’t have

married you wouldn’t have

the twins graduating this year and

where would you be now

should you had taken the next train?

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ORESTES (excerpt)

I too want to see father’s murder under the soothing

generality of death, to forget of him in the wholeness

of death that awaits us too. This night has taught me

the innocence of all the usurpers. We’re all usurpers

of something — of the people, the throne, of Eros or

even of death. My sister the usurper of my only life

and I of yours.

My sweet man, with such patience, you share

the foolish events of others. Yet my hand is yours,

take it, usurp it too — yours, it is yours for this reason;

take it, squeeze it; you expect it to be free of punishments,

retaliations, memories, free of all — I want it free too,

that it’ll only belong to me so that I’ll give it to you

completely. Forgive me this secret loneliness and sharing,

you know that it splits me in two. What a beautiful night.

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