Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume V

Spring in the Countryside

Time delays, light smoothens the surfaces, and enters the old

closets, the drawers, and under the beds, dries up the saliva

moistened pillow, it annuls the turn of the stairway,

it tidies the words in an iambic format. And he,

who had only one old, long-overcoat, which covered

the guileless scars, the grey hairs, are now forced

to remain naked under the light, pretending to be a

youngish statue, that one foolish passerby places on

his straw hairs was, a worn-out hat with ribbons

and wax cherries from the ancient summers.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763726

Arrows

Excerpt

I helped him up and guided him to a seat on top of the same barrel
he had supposedly broken. His weight caused the wine to pour out
even faster. Without a word, I turned to Benjamin and offered him a
hand.
“The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”
I smiled, extending my hand further. “I apologize for the push; I
didn’t think I could stop you otherwise.”
His eyes darted from my face to my hand, and he took it with a
grunt. I smiled even more, digging my heels to support his weight as
he stood up. I patted him on the shoulder. I was getting rather good
at applying Bartolomé’s persuasive techniques.
“The barrel must have been damaged already,” I said. “You do
realize it could not have been broken by this little fall alone, don’t
you? Please, don’t hurt him or anyone else again.”
Benjamin put a hand on his dagger and leered at the Indian, who
was already picking up the damaged barrel and loading it onto his
narrow shoulders. He was lean and small, the barrel undeniably big
for him.
I met Bartolomé’s eyes, intense and darkened by the shadow of
his scowl in the dawn’s dim light. The corner of his mouth twitched,
and he gave me an imperceptible nod.
“Back to work!” he bellowed.
I felt ashamed for all of us. It sickened me to realize that every
man among us, even Benjamin, someone who had a tendency to be
jovial, was inclined towards cruelty towards the Indians, as if by
some pre-ordained right.

Soon it was almost time to leave Borburata for the city of El Tocuyo.
We would be a party of ten men on horseback, one hundred Indian
servants, fifty tame Indian warriors and three hundred head of
livestock.
The horse they offered me must have been the oldest quadruped
ever to walk under the sun, and a moody one at that. It glared at me.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Chthonian Bodies

Thematism
Polyphonic symphony of blades of grass
swaying across my mind
human weakness: the post
guarding two plains
separating abundance
encroaching into abysses of hatred
fencing the freedom of the wind
jester in Zeus’ court
rebel, an atheist revering life amid
trees mesmerized at the far away
view of people building fences
to divide the fence-less and
with to respect for images free
they cut and measure
and build and die building plots
over their stagnant void

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763424

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

Excerpt

He ran to the first aid clinic next door. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“There’s been an accident on the road,” the medic said.
“What sort of accident?”
“A tractor-trailer jackknifed and went off the road.”
“Anyone else involved?”
“A pickup truck. There’s other help coming from town.”
Ken’s skin crawled. He forced the bile in his throat back down into his
gut and ran back to the lab, yelling through the door to John that he was
going to check on Jessica and her family. He cranked up the truck, his
heart pounding, an unnameable fear rising in his chest. He put his foot to
the floor, the truck careening around potholes and over the rutted washboard
road. About thirty miles down the road he saw the flashing lights.
He pulled up, got out of the truck and ran to the RCMP car parked at the
edge of the road. Below him, at the bottom of the embankment, amid the
jagged broken-up pieces of the semi, the pickup burned. Shaking beyond
control, Ken ran, stumbling and sliding down the steep slope. The young
RCMP officer he had met previously was struggling back up toward him.
He held up his hand. “Don’t go down there!” he shouted to Ken.
Ken stumbled toward him.
“Don’t go down there!” He yelled, again.
The officer grabbed at Ken’s shirt. Ken spun away. “Is the pickup blue?”
he shouted.
“I don’t know.” The officer said.
“How many people are in the truck?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many people in the god damned truck?” Ken screamed.
“Three, I think.”
“What do you mean, you think?”
“Don’t go down there, the officer pleaded. “Please don’t go down there.”
Ken ran down; tripped, fell, rolled, picked himself up and scrambled
down. He stopped when he hit the wall of heat bursting from the truck.
The flames were dying; the truck was gutted. But what he saw was a vision
he would spend the rest of his life trying to erase from his mind – a scene
that would come to him in nightmares over and over, until sleep meant
nothing but reliving the carnage – pieces of charred bodies inside the truck
– one of them still wearing a piece of fringed and beaded leather jacket.
I have spent so much of my life trying to contain these feelings – to deal
with these things. For a person of that age I had seen far too much death. I
was born to it – born in it. Anyone looking at me – coming from the right
side of the tracks, from a privileged family – anyone who would imagine the
sort of life a person like that would have would be completely off the mark.
So, I have to deal with these feelings very severely because I can’t make the
pictures go away. They don’t go away.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

Erotokritos

https://libroslibertad.com/2016/11/06/erotokritos-for-collectors-of-rare-books-poetry-vitsentzos-kornaros-transcribed-by-manolis/

Missa Bestialis

Terrible Game
where the thoughts grab it in their cruel power
forceful twirling feelings throw it in the high
then smashed it down in its mysterious depth
in this terrible game the poem emerges

Swamped

Excerpt

that he had truly learned how to cook. Jonathan and Logan cleaned
up the table, took the dishes to the sink and rinsed them, and Alex
loaded them in the dishwasher, while Eteo went to his office to make
a few phone calls to inform more clients about the new Target Resources
company and the shares he recommended for them. Meanwhile
Jonathan sat down at the family room table and did some
homework while Logan went out to meet his new flame, as he called
his new girlfriend, and Alexander got busy with his play station.


Next day Eteo arrived in the office at 6:10, well before Helena, but almost
as soon as he turned his computer on, Logan walked in. Herbert
was not far behind, smiling and chuckling.
“Let’s look at the opening orders” he said to Eteo and stood behind
him. Eteo went to the page that showed the buying and selling
orders for Platinum Properties. Pointing to two orders from Pacific
Trends, he confirmed to Herbert that they were both his orders.
“Could I buy a few more shares, Eteo, before these two orders?”
“We bought you some yesterday morning, remember?”
“Yes, I know, and here is my cheque, by the way.” Herbert handed
Eteo a cheque for yesterday’s purchase and what he was planning to
buy today. “For another 30,000 shares,” he explained.
Eteo wrote the buying order and turned to his client.
“I should go to the trading desk to instruct the head trader in
person about who’s first and who’s second. I’ll be right back.”
He needed to get to the trading desk quickly. It was almost time
for the opening bell. By the time he got back to his office, trading had
begun and a beaming Herbert had his extra 30,000 shares. With that,
the always smiling investor walked out, though not before promising
to keep Eteo in the loop.
The rest of the morning unfolded like any other trading day.
Eteo’s other orders were in line, and he steadily picked up more shares
of Platinum Properties and allocated them to the six clients he had
selected while keeping a steady eye on the price of the stock, which
moved up slightly into the low forties.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

Still Waters

Excerpt

Chapter Four
Weary after her busy day, Tyne lay in bed, her new Bible propped
open on her knees. Although her eyes were on the page in front of
her, she was not reading. Too many images chased each other through
her weary mind, and she could not exorcise them. One moment she
saw Jeannette Aubert clutching her rosary; the next moment Adeline
Koffer’s family intertwined with the image of old Mrs. Forsyth fighting
for every breath beneath the oxygen mask that covered her nose
and mouth.
And, interposed between those pictures, the handsome face of
Cameron Tournquist flashed unbidden and unwelcome. She had
spoken to him for only a minute before leaving the ward at the end
of her shift. Why should his face be almost constantly before her
now?
She recognized that her turbulent thoughts did not come only
from Cameron or the patients on her ward. Her roommate, Carol
Ann, was also having an unsettling effect on Tyne. She had seen
again the distress in Curly’s eyes when the three girls met in their
room shortly after three o’clock. When Maureen began to tease the
curly-haired girl about her attachment to the operating room, Carol
Ann answered her sharply and stormed out, slamming the door behind
her.
Maureen’s obvious hurt prompted Tyne to say gently, “Leave her
alone, Moe. There’s something bothering her.”
“Sorry.” Moe had looked repentant. “But I always thought she
loved being kidded about the OR. I’ve never known her to react like
that.”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763068

Übermensch

Promise

And we promised never to deny Him, not even

for a night or day, not for a single moment, even

when He spoke to the fallen tree or to those ancient

ghosts that often passed through our minds.

Endless famine of our race, queen of our bellies,

slowly crawled on wet cobblestones like our childish

innocence, and we asked Him to continue His teaching

and He liked us because we chose to be scattered

into innumerable pieces that the wind may blow us

to the opposite shore. He liked us, because

we disdained everything, even the secret, for our

sacrifice. Übermensch smiled and said,

it was all good.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGFRGLVH

Αλέξανδρος Ίσαρης, Μες στο χώμα καληνύχτα