Scarecrow
He knew our peculiar desire for suffering, He knew
we preferred the sighs of defeat and those left
by the birds in their morning flight, though our soft
eardrums were unable to capture the thunderbolt’s
rapture, we still wanted to lie next to the woman’s
breast, close enough to feel her pain, close enough
to taste the salinity of her skin and He, alone, encompassed
the earth seen by our irises His primal goal to transcend
our desires once and for all, while we still kneeled
before the scarecrow, jet-black eyes and straw hair
on his head that moved from side to side, myths upon
which we had based our existence.
Fecundity of Eros
To see life the way others see it
to believe that dust is always dust
not legions of meanings
dust filled with rustling and directions
the messenger, not the message
we arrived at the wrong shores
crossing an incomplete destiny
and poetry is the reflection
of the missing mass of dreams
fata morgana, erotic signal
up high, the invisible
makes the flower tremble
puts the chord on fire
of the eternal world that struggles
not knowing where to turn.
The endless unanswered letters
the path between the heart and light
hands around the end of sorrow
floating diaphaneity that suddenly vanishes
to reappear with
whatever ever holy
or sinful existed
a passing moment
sanctified passage
erases the people’s footprints
on the wind-battered earth.
As if it was the first day of Justice.
Silence
Silence — you see it, you hit it with
the nailed coffin with a dead man with his choking breath.
You crawl close to him during the nights
you ask questions yet his voice is lost for years.
He has forgotten to speak, and you only listen
to the creaking of the stars and ethereal domes.
You hear the rustle of all the secret sounds
that cover the rattling of the machine guns.
Silence. Mother, holy whore who has hidden the meaning
of the end in its uterus since the beginning.
I stare through the window: airplanes cut,
into pieces, angels upon the open skies.
Excerpt
What if you’re immortal?
You lived the true
life only once in your
healthy bodies under the sun
and in the wind of our
miserable motherland;
now you live under a
different sun and in another
wind and you’ll never
relive your lives oh, fairies.
Hearts and cities bloomed
and stooped
because of you,
adorers of Hellas before you
shadows and idols
yet Hellas remains intact
please don’t cry for her
and each person who’ll
become your slave and
alone or as a whole nation
stand against you, he’ll
perish with you.
Excerpt
“I’m interested in one gemstone,” he said.
“Which one?”
“If you let me see them, I’ll pick out the one I’m interested in.”
In his father’s den, he looked through the collection and chose one.
The next day he gave it to Miloo. She put her arms around him and held
him tight, shivering and crying against him.
“This is only a minor token of the way I feel about you,” Ken said. “I
love you beyond words and this is only a symbol of that love.”
“I’m so frightened of the feelings I have,” she cried.
“I’m going to ask you not to be,” Ken said. “Don’t be frightened. It’s
fear that kills us. I’ve been talking with the Canadian ambassador about
going to Canada and I want you to come with me.”
“Canada? It sounds so far away. It sounds so dangerous.”
“Yes, it is far away, but how could it be any more dangerous than where
we are right now? Look at what’s going on here. There are more people
disappearing every day and everyone is pretending that nothing is happening.
No one is doing anything about it. Everyone goes home at night,
looking around corners and holding their breath – wondering if they’ll
get a knock on the door at three in the morning and disappear too. I
won’t live that way.”
“What can you do about it?”
“There are always things you can do if you don’t let fear get in the way.
If you stop thinking you shut the door on fear. When you start to think
about things you get fearful. You just have to have the simplest of plans
and stop thinking. Carry it out. For instance, these people who are informing
– what on earth are they informing on in a village like this? What
could the local people be doing that could possibly be of any danger to
anyone? This is corruption beyond the imagination. This is madness. My
grandmother told me one of her Spanish sayings – not all those who are
in the madhouse are mad and not all those who are out aren’t. From what
I see, I think that the lunatics are out and they’ve put us in the asylum.”
He took her hand. “Will you come to Canada with me?”
“I’d have to leave my family.”
“You and your family don’t get along.”
“But, they are still my family.”
“Would you like to live in a country where we have the freedom and
the right to be who we are?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Would you like to live with me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to come?”
FROM OBLOMOV’S JOURNAL
Rainy day in the afternoon
It’s getting more and more difficult to get started,
to start again, to make myself do it
and get it over with.
I am becoming more and more alienated from
youth,
like the one who is alienated from
what he is not anymore, from who he was.
It’s not a betrayal, I’m just forgetting;
I’m busy with others or not
and I forget.
Another day, in the morning
I look at my body as if to an alien planet
on which I settled.
I immerse myself into the peace and dreams with it,
I procrastinate because of its moods, I always
procrastinate.
It’s a kind of symbiosis
between me and the flesh planet, which sees, hears,
feels, sleeps and rests.
Together in some kind of love and death.
Me or it, one of us has to give in.
Manolis Aligizakis 