The Body The body between the hands — history and music, word and deed — oh, stone limbs and the wall, he said, the wall; horse riders passed outside; the spurs shone in the night gleam, the smell of the horses remained and the air of their leave stirred the corner of the tablecloth a little, and the only flower. We had to find the continuance in things indifferent to us when the colourful lights of the display windows were turned off and if there was something beyond death, it was exactly that slow and pale colour that rose from within death.
SKETCHES FOR A SUMMER A Word For Summer We’ve returned to autumn again, the summer like an exercise book that we are tired of writing in remains filled with deletions, abstract designs and question marks in the margin, we’ve returned to the season of eyes staring into the mirror under the electric light tightened lips and the people strangers in the rooms the streets under the pepper trees while headlights of cars massacre thousands of pale masks. We’ve returned; we always start out to return to loneliness, a fistful of soil, to the empty hands. And yet once I fell in love with Syngrou Avenue the double up and down of the great road leading us as though miraculously to the sea the eternal sea to cleanse us of our sins once I fell in love with some unknown people that I suddenly met at the end of the day talking to themselves like captains of a sunken armada evidence that the world is immense. And yet I loved these roads here, these columns even though I was born on the other shore near reeds and rushes, islands that had water springing out of the sand to quench the thirst of the rower, even though I was born near the sea that I fold and unfold with my fingers when I’m tired—I no longer know where I was born.
In an Old Book In an old book, about a hundred years old, forgotten amid its pages, I found an unsigned watercolour. It must have been the work of a good artist. It had the title, “Presentation of Love.” But a more fitting title would be “Love of the extremely sensual.” Because it was obvious when you looked at the piece (the artist’s idea was easily felt) that the young man in the picture was not meant for those who love in somewhat healthy ways, and within accepted boundaries, with his deep brown eyes, and the extraordinary beauty of his face, the beauty of his deviate attractions, with his ideal lips that grace a beloved body with sensual delight with his ideal lips made for beds common morality calls shameless.
Helena On the first day of spring, I call you ‘Come, let us spread colours to the edge of the plain to the far end of the cosmos a cyclamen deep in the rock fissure of empathy, ‘Come, let us unfold the whitewash of hyacinths unto the hoarfrost of last night perhaps the impulse of blood will turn its icy mirror into the freshest cicada song a new illumination that becomes a fireball like the virgin sun ray that opens a smile on the gardenia white petals exploring the laughter of your emotions and the crystal star blushes in the embrace of the serene firmament
Manolis Aligizakis 