Sirocco 7 Levante For D.I. Antoniou Things that changed our face deeper than thought and more so ours like the blood and more so sunken in the sweltering heat of noon behind the masts. Amid chains and commands no one remembers. The other days, the other nights bodies, pain and lust the bitterness of human nakedness in pieces lower than the pepper trees along dusty streets and all these charms and all these symbols on the last branch in the shadow of the big ship the memory, a shade. The hands that touched us don’t belong to us, only deeper, when the roses darken a rhythm under the mountain’s shadow, crickets, moistens our silence in the night yearning for a pelagic sleep slipping toward the pelagic sleep. Under the shadow of the big ship when the winch whistled I left tenderness to the money-changers.
He is a good man for all his sinful ways. You sent him to me, Lord, to save me for Your Church. If You gave him that mission, he must have found some favour in Your eyes. Give to me the honour and the joy of atoning for his sins and thus of assuring for his soul a place within Your sight on Judgement Day.” Padraig drew the crucifix towards him and kissed the feet of Jesus. “And Caitlin, Lord. She who taught me to love where I knew only how to fear. Help me to save her from the damnation of turning away from You. I must save her, Lord. I must. And give me the strength to … to love her only as her priest.” Padraig lowered his forehead onto the hands that held the crucifix, and tears dropped from his eyes. “Caitlin. Caitlin. Are you to be my torment now?”
Icy Love Erotic embrace of crystalline ice wand of the tree branch that it won’t break it that it won’t lose it and in its endless love it shrouds it with the wings of death and you hear them dry creaks cracked sighs of pain and agony like tears dripping on the frozen street
A Little Sleep The distant voice of the lottery vendor. The swaying of the tree. A canteen steadied in the sand. The west is burning. A purple reflection over the seashore. The few houses painted crimson, silence and sundown. You have a summer handkerchief in your pocket, a sorrow you left behind on the ledge like the ripped shoe of the spring that was left on the rock when the last group grabbed three meters of sea and left stooping among the tents of the wind. How fast the sun goes down in your eyes; your coat is already smelling of moist, you put your hands in your gloves like the trees get in the clouds. Where the tempest stops your glance is re-ignited where the sky ends your song and your whole face are reborn. There is a yellow star in your silence like a small daisy on the side table of the sick man a little warmth on every yellow leaf that turns the pages of time backward. It is enough that you know. The other communication doesn’t end at midnight. The line is continued from deep inside and from afar with a few stops, interruptions, accidents, it continues and autumn finds shelter on the railings of the station or the fence wall of the Orphanage, it listens to the call for silence on the damp roofs and to the gramophone of the seashore bar, that the moon turns, a scratched vinyl, a very old tango. No one dances. But you, turning the moon to its other side, beyond midnight, further from the ledge, you listen to the great music while you saunter in the harbour with the twelve boat masts like a speechless restaurant server who cleans the autumnal tables folding carefully the napkins of the night, gathering the stack of plates with the leftover fish bones. The sea and the songs continue. All these that the locked people left outside belong to us: the hurrah of the wind in the darkened rooms, the music that descends in big waves and hits the window shutters, the silence that opens its purse and looks at itself in her square little mirror, and the woman who wraps herself with the army blanket and sleeps next to her bag and you too, as you light your cigarette with a star over the calm plain of your soul like the guard who stays vigil over the sleeping soldiers and thinks of his woman of the sea the city with the flags the trumpets the sun-dust and the glory of men. And next to you, you know it, this big smile like the circular alarm clock next to the asleep worker. It’s time to sleep a little. Don’t be afraid. The clock is properly wound up. It’ll get you up on time with the bucket of dawn that draws water from the well, with the crawl of a proclamation that noiselessly sheds light under the door of your silence. Be assured. It’ll wake you up.
Manolis Aligizakis 