Indeterminable Each morning, he would open the window and sing to the architecture of uncertainty dismembered memories of love that resided in the words in the sound of a voice that wasn’t heard he would look beyond time on the shore the dream of God always slept the heart is a library of discarded poems that never disembarked the moon flutters inside the myth he sees further from the forests the pregnant enigma who knows whether the world will exist tomorrow our belongings are reflections of whom we fell in love with the one who felt the echo of lust memory is thin to remember the shine that each hide in old pictures C’est un long chemin pour la jaunesse des choses the words shepherds hideaway of things they know nothing belongs to them they unfurl the sails before they sink in the faraway friendliness The sky is a porter of souls it remembers time sows and reaps immortality
‘Oh yes, I knew him well. And admired him. He’s a monk in Loughinish Abbey in south Armagh now. Why do you ask?’ ‘He was epileptic too, wasn’t he?’ Nora’s hands rested on the table with the knife and fork still in them. She looked earnestly at Liam. She accepted the fact of her epilepsy with no embarrassment. She had long ago come to terms with it. It meant no more to her than the dark brown of her eyes or the black of her hair. But she wanted others to accept it, to regard it simply as a normal aspect of her being. Most of all, though she could not explain why, she wanted Liam to accept it. So she watched his face and was disappointed. Liam’s mouth twitched, and his eyes looked down at the bacon and eggs on his plate. He reddened a little and then said, ‘Yes, he was;’ but his voice could not hold the nonchalance he tried to charge it with. Internally Liam knew he had failed her. He wished he could kick himself. Why do I react this way? he repeated to himself while silence extended into a solid barrier between them. ‘Do you believe the gossip that Padraig was my father, Liam?’ Nora’s question exploded in his face. The barrier disintegrated with a crash that reverberated through the house, through the empty schoolrooms. ‘Nora! How could you …? How can you … ?’ Liam struggled to regain his composure. The blast from her gelignite question had hurled him off his feet. She smiled. The smile leered with malicious sadism. Liam was totally confused, disoriented, unbearably discomfited. He liked to feel solid, familiar ground beneath his feet. He liked the trodden paths of life, however narrow or however straight, and he did not stray from them. He was at one with those whom Grey elegised in his English country churchyard. He was one of the living dead, his life already past, like a swift, irrecoverable dream, his being already buried under a smothering mound of moral precepts, religious commandments, social expectations and private, psychological inhibitions. ‘Some people in the village have hinted that I might be Father Padraig’s bastard, haven’t they?’ Stop it, Nora, stop it, Liam cried silently. He gripped his knife and fork fiercely. He clenched his teeth. He pushed his back hard against the chair till he felt the wood bruise his spine. He drew in a deep breath. ‘Whatever put that silly notion into your head?’ he blurted out, and then realised how weak his question was. ‘I don’t understand you.’ ‘You understand me well enough, Liam Dooley.’ Nora’s voice was hard, penetrating, like the bull the stoneworkers pounded into granite to split it. ‘I know what they say. I know that you know also.’
VI Olive tree sings its hymn to the shredded shade as the slave’s blood weaves another sunlit mark in the bird’s flight path; the achieved fanning perception of the corn fields that mysteriously wave their arms laughing in the purple dusk becomes an apparition. The poplars keep the last light from the sharp edge of the knife when the metal bore spits out fire at the speed of light. Troglodyte machinates his enemies and maneuvers his raised fist against the sparrow’s heart which struggles at the mirage of evening and at the heat of the sun at high noon before the arrival of the shadows. Troglodyte raises his arm before the clouds and at the sigh of the pious beasts having their dinner in the heavenly garden of nature.
Manolis Aligizakis 