Every evening with the thyme scorched on the rock’s bosom there’s a water-drop that for a long time has been digging silence to its marrow there is a bell hanging from the ancient plane-tree calling out the years Sparks sleep lightly in the embers of solitude and roofs contemplate on the golden fine down on the upper lip of Alonaris 1 – yellow fine down like the corn tassel smoked up by the grief of the west Virgin Mary leans down on the myrtle her wide skirt stained by grapes On the road a child cries and the ewe who lost her lambs answers from the meadow Shadow by the spring The barrel frozen The blacksmith’s daughter with soaked feet On the table the bread and the olive in the grapevine the night lamp of evening star…
…she would try out a suggestion that a friend had whispered to her once to increase their enjoyment. It sounded like fun. But what would they do when winter arrived? Really, they needed their own place and that meant that Pavel needed papers—a passport, and a residence permit, at least. They would have to get busy. ★ It was a very different world for Pavel. Up with the rooster, check the chickens, water the market garden with buckets from the well. (Surely they had heard of garden hoses in the Soviet Union? He planned to do a little shopping in Toglyatti or Saratov one day.) Then, check the primitive irrigation system that watered the larger crop of barley. Estimate the height on the patch of sunflowers; as soon as they grew large enough, he had some great plans for intimate picnics with Vera among their stately stalks. She would look gorgeous, her sinuous shape naked in the fresh air. The pine forest was getting a bit old—he always returned with twigs and grit in his clothes. He hadn’t yet thought about how they would find their privacy once winter arrived. If it were market day, they would pick the early beets and new potatoes and Shukshin would drive the produce into the village using his antiquated motorcycle and attached cart, a vintage vehicle that had probably seen service in the last war. These visits usually entailed time spent in fixing the motorcycle when Shukshin returned. Pavel didn’t know that much about mechanics either, but here he was learning faster. The way the parts fit together was engrossing; he found he could figure it out with some help from Shukshin, and he lamented all the years spent in studying academic subjects without getting a good grounding in what every adolescent learned while growing up: working on the family car. The elder Shukshin thought he had died and gone to heaven; a good strong lad to do the farm work—at no expense to him other than some room and board. Granted, he wasn’t trained, but then neither was the last lad that he had asked to help him. A dimwit—and he had been sent packing. Fortunately, there was no official record of his ever working for Shukshin. That was the good thing about living in the provinces—no one from Moscow was very interested in whether they stuck to the regulations. Moreover, Vera was in love with this strong, bright lad. There was only one annoying problem—he was a foreigner. He would likely get…
Calendar of Illusion Sounds and words of illusion reflections of the invisible flow in their shadow voices and names fragments of the chaotic truth the words don’t reach adulthood they vibrate in the distance they pop up from the seams of the horizon of the wounded man ancient pneuma rises from the space what do you wait for which lovers does your song call rise to recognize yourself before you become a season The wind carefreely passes whoever is alone and believes in miracles and changes the world daily the unsettled mind that for eons deciphers in his heart the forests of tiny nothings Gaea knows the end and blooms
Toparch Motionlessness incorporating stability immortalizes the melody of the tree whitewashed dawn suddenly in the finch’s song orchestra of swaying blades of grass faraway island concurs nothing is sweeter than the wind’s embrace the tree: an anchorite amid immobile rocks and swaying blades of grass wish they had the last word painter’s vision in substratum and upon the immense sky equanimity of earth between two archangels: colors and lines
Manolis Aligizakis 