NOW Now, not tomorrow. Not another time, not in another season. Now. What I have to do now, now is the time for it, and what I should do tomorrow or at another time, in another season, I will do it then, immediately, on the spot. Tell me now what you have to say, and destroy what you have to destroy, lift up, what you have to lift up, live what you have to live. Every upcoming day
your whole life long…
Live what you have to live. As nothing is left for us. Just the death…
Twenty-Second Hour In the hands of zealots He places matches and they march to the burning site where they conflagrate holy books and the enemy’s hovels ostracized reason rebels against simple thought invisible bow strikes notes and the birds of prey swallow bitter beads sweating multitudes gather and an archaic ziggurat decays in their arrogant minds when like silence of untold myths the pandemonium of arcane words impede all progress and vanity of dramatic scenes neglects sanctity of pious peasants and artful efforts of thought police the moralists insisting on the absurdity as Jehovah breaks a sinister smile at the chaos His gift of the polyglot concept erupting more futile in vain whitewashed bodies and I ask her to slightly open her lips to define my finger guiding her smile against the mirror’s wish as outside our open window pieced-out souls go by with seamed partitions one for the spring another for Death one for summer at last one for the red egg and smiling Death peeks from behind the tree freeing a laughing ladybug onto jasmine and dons the polka dot tie with confidence of the omniscient He brings in the ever-sharp translator asking ‘why?’ and the slum lord’s greed answers: who cares?
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
Memory Sandwich The Monroes migrated from nobody-knows-where just as the swallows were turning up famished at our backyard feeder. A van with lilting shocks and unfamiliar licence plates deposited their belongings on the lawn of a neglected two-bedroom. By the time the leaves on the poplars in Falaise Park had begun to coil, just as the wings of the leatherjackets started to sag, the family up and moved away, a memory. Afterwards a succession of temporary tenants occupied the bungalow. There were couples with children and couples without. There were lessees, owners, renters and loners, none of whom were able to do anything about the air of despondency permeating that sullen cedar structure. Fresh paint, a garden — nothing worked. For years it sat empty, victim to vandals, rodents and mould, roof shingles scattered, windows lost to target practice. The day it was bulldozed that house looked much as it did the day the Monroes moved in: unloved. Besides the adults, Nelson and Connie, there were three kids: Gus, the eldest at 16, had a purple birthmark splashed across one eye; Lana, a year younger, was a quiet girl whose attempts to conceal sprouting mammary glands were unsuccessful. Shortly after their arrival the youngest crossed the street to where I was fanning my collection of baseball cards. I had been aware of Freddy observing me from a bedroom window. He introduced himself with the assurance of someone accustomed to the role of stranger. There seemed a precocious savvy in those squinting eyes. – Wanna be friends? he asked. To facilitate camaraderie Freddy faked an interest in baseball. He misused terms like line drives and pop fouls, cannily eschewing…
Unobserved The unobserved specks blow by stay anonymous while drinking coffee in the morning not fathom its meaning like some innocence in your kiss remains unnoticed like hand touching pencil shaft while you write reverently but when you idle mesmerized by a moonlight, distraught sensation arousing stops you on your tracks or refreshes delight of crafting poem
. . . Stathis, Stathis, however did you manage it? Everything is going superbly, just as your fine lad said. It is almost as if all this never . . . A bolt of energy struck through him. Exercise. But at this intersection of hour and mood? To him, morning and exercise are related. Exercise collided with now. The commitment of discipline must not loosen, derange, or unfasten him. As if on command, he rose and stood at attention. His body commanded his mind to command it: a few knee-bends, jumping jacks, and he extended his hands almost to the walls. Inhaled deep, exhaled slow, his breath became cuprous, tarnished, an obese air; but he continued, and his lungs butterflied and collapsed, perhaps in rehearsal for a ritual in which he might never take part. There has been no extraordinary exertion, yet the burden of boredom diminished him to the figure of a junkman’s nag tolling uphill before the overload of relic erudition. Half of a man knew it was war; half of a man insisted it wasn’t. In the confusion, it was difficult to discern which entered the theatre of war with a plowshare. The blunder into the hunt, to discover oneself, was a quarry that dogs followed in all directions of the cosmos, dogs which ran and followed his steps as if ready to bite, to dig deep in his flesh with their teeth. He stopped as abruptly as he started and sat on his bed. His mind flew back to the island.
Manolis Aligizakis 