Image
Like an ancient
repeatedly hymned sin
your body that I crave
to re-explore
gleams in my mind
like that first time
under the shade of the olive tree
jealous, sophisticated,
eternal wisdom staring
and softly whispering
yes, yes
Wheat Ears
Day: September 11, 2025
Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems
Fellow Traveller in Melancholy
As she realized how much my tragic love for her overtook my heart, she invited me, among the ruins of the London Tower, for a cup of tea from the same hands, named by the killers of her lovers, depending on the season, sometimes “shovels”, other times “shiners”. She accompanied her offer with the only word she had kept inside her for years like something precious, she said, more than her life, like a secret gift of her breasts in the tempest of my lust. I raised my eyes and looked, as an unexpected shiver shook my body: she was naked before the year’s fountain, the fans of a nighty fire sprouted out of her belly and the wall was splattered with blood. I felt that the famous, “better tomorrow” had arrived, was a present reality. It was obvious that everything from the past was already erased, the nightmare of the tropics and the harbour had already vanished. I was a gigantic red eagle that saw, from a young age, the closing eyes of the opposite sun. She was the big, dark forest spread among the chandeliers, the chest and the big hallway mirror used for official palace events. Her thought was crown, her glance renaissance, her glance a beak. Her name was Rodamne. She had lived in faraway lands from where she had come to meet me. I told her I freaked out, thinking we hadn’t met earlier. How could she have, via the measure of the beautiful woman she was, replaced her eyes with two green Egyptian scarabs and she didn’t see me when I passed her? She had probably cut her long hair short so that the words that escaped from my mouth were one cathedral church built, for the only purpose of executing at the site and a specific moment, the unknown archbishop, and seller of small items, from an irregular Mexican squad. She didn’t talk, she didn’t stir, she only took in her embrace the flowers that decorated the room and scattered them in the fresh ravines, in orchards with the delayed hunter, at the foothills of the Memories Mountains. The candles burned joyously on the graceful bronze candelabras and the song she sang teary-eyed had the same meaning with the phrase “time for Shaba” in the Hebrew neighbourhoods of Thessaly cities.
Arrows
excerpt
“Merciful heaven! I told her we could pray but not that we should
go anywhere. That is absurd.”
“It seemed to me that she enjoyed getting him all worked up.”
“And he believed her?”
“You would have to ask him, padrecito. After that, he was all over
her, but she was letting him have it. She pushed him off and left. He
stayed there puffing like a mad bull.”
“And what happened then?”
“He consoled himself with an Indian girl, what else?”
“You mean he forced himself upon an Indian girl?”
“I do not think those breasts I saw belonged to a man, no.”
“And you watched?”
He shrugged.
“Why not?”
Benjamin put his shoes back on and rolled onto all fours to stand
up. I was agitated. I didn’t know what to say or do. So I reverted to
my priestly ways.
“I expect your confession, you hear?”
“Ha, padrecito. You would do better to ask that of some others. The
men are talking. Some of them do not like Losada’s peaceful
manners. There is trouble brewing. They think we should teach the
Indians to fear us first and then talk about friendship. They say
Losada is too old for this, that he should never have been chosen for
the expedition to start with.”
“But we have come farther than the three previous expeditions.”
“I know. It would be like criticizing Bartolomé after he got us
through the storm. I am just telling you what is going on. Do you
think we should inform the captain about this?”
“How serious is it? Was it just a casual conversation, or was it
more like a conspiracy? Who was talking?”
“Infante, Giral y Coscorrillo.”
“So, the only man of any importance was Infante?”
“This time, yes.”
I was disturbed by both these revelations from Benjamin, and I
didn’t know what I must do about either.
Manolis Aligizakis 