Privilege
I don’t get it, he says, this up and down.
To forget I look in the small mirror.
I see the immobile window; I see the wall.
Nothing changes in or out of the mirror.
I place a flower on the chair (if it lasts).
I live here, at this number, on this street.
Suddenly they lift me (with the chair and the flower)
they take me down, carry me up, I don’t know.
Luckily, I managed to put this mirror in my pocket.
Angry Poem About the Occupation
Don’t tell me the Kouroi that adorned the Hellenic shores have abandoned this forsaken place. This land, this black land, thousand times embittered never stopped to give birth to brave men. Even if we shed tears, we mourn their loss and are joyous for having them as our brothers. Who shall cry for the death of so many brave men? I shall cry and narrate their glory, but now I sing for Mitsos Asteriou, the eagle of Roumeli Tower of Atalanta, the brave, the manly, is among the first brave men of justice and freedom. His heart was as big as the mountains and his mind as high as the cypresses. Workers, let go of the tools let go of the hammers and with both hands show your contempt for the fascists, the lawless perverts who swore to the night that surrounds them, to enslave the World and spread darkness. And now tighten your fists, raise them high let us all together sing the song of the workers’ victory: and behold, Mitsos is walking on earth. His face is pale, his lips embittered although benevolence always shines in his eyes. He’s the one who believed, who was full of love look at how he extended his bloodied hands to us to hold us tightly onto his ripped chest.
To the wall they brought him blindfolded to be killed to the place they leaned his kind body the stones shed tears and wail like ghosts and an eagle, Hellenic eagle, flies over there and shades the black place with his wings and constantly groans, exhumes bitterness and curses.
The City
You said: “I’ll go to another land, to another sea.
I’ll find another city better than this one.
Every effort I make is ill-fated, doomed.
And my heart, like a dead thing, lies buried.
How long will my mind continue to wither like this?
Everywhere I turn my eyes, wherever they happen to fall
I see the black ruins of my life, here
where I’ve squandered, wasted and ruined so many years.”
New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will return to the same streets.
You will age in the same neighbourhoods, and in these
same houses, you will turn gray. You will always
arrive in the same city. Don’t even hope to escape it.
There is no ship for you, no road out of town.
As you have wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you wasted it in the whole world.
Stories
Yes, I couldn’t deny
my promise to mention
my first cousin Antony
best dancer of western Crete
and narrate his sweet story
impossible not to include it
in my recollections
like the beautiful breasts
of the girl I touched
behind the movie theater
in that side street where
we frequented when the bright
lights could reveal
our secret thoughts and
like my distant cousin, who once
jumped from one edge of a ravine
to the other just to defy Death
yes, between the two edges
three meters apart where
just thirty meters lower
Hades’ gaping mouth lurked,
I too dared touch the breast
of the fourteen year old girl
Manolis Aligizakis 