Principles
You coached leaves of the olive tree to
shred sunlight and you begged
finches to whistle summer
but you left my lips unkissed
except while foreign lands rejoiced
in your principles, behind you
this yellow wall’s firm blocks
of the abandoned building
overgrown with brier where
cicadas compose adagios
gardenias sweating aromas
but you exiled my lips
while only seagulls kept you company
and my sobs hushed the night
Picture by Germain Droogenbroodt
DAWN OF HOPE
The light of dawn
erases the traces of the night.
Relentlessly, time goes on flowing,
although I wish it would stop
like a picture fixed by the camera’s lens
because as valuable like fruit in a tree is love.
Like the moon ascending at night,
so you are, my love.
Whatever happens, wherever you are,
I keep you in my heart.
Since I am in love with you, my world has changed
for two hearts found a home of tenderness.
Sunrays play on the strings of love
lighting up the dawn of hope.
ANNA KEIKO, CHINA
Translation Anna Keiko – Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley Barkan
ΕΛΠΙΔΟΦΟΡΟ ΠΡΩΙΝΟ
Το λυκαυγές σβύνει
τ’απομεινάρια της νύχτας
ασταμάτητος κυλά ο χρόνος
που θα `θελα να σταματούσε
σαν φωτογραφία στο φακό μηχανής
σαν το φρούτο στο δέντρο
πολύτιμη είναι η αγάπη
σαν το φεγγάρι που φωτίζεται τη νύχτα
είσαι αγάπη μου
κι όπου κι αν είσαι κι ότι κι αν συμβεί
σ’ εχω πάντα στην καρδιά μου.
Που σ’ αγαπώ ο κόσμος έχει αλλάξει
κι οι καρδιές μας χτυπούν με την ίδια τρυφερότητα.
Ηλιαχτίδες παίζουν της αγάπης τις χορδές
φωτίζοντας την πρωϊνή ελπίδα
Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη//Translated by Manolis Aligizakis
HEDONISM
A fleshless string of beads made of songs
I haven’t given you today
with the spells and games of a charmer
I’ll cloy you, my love
naked and like a vine I’ll climb
to taste your body that devours me
with my fingers I’ll conflagrate
the tender hairs of your mound
enrapturing wine and milk that soothes
to sleep I’ll bring to moisten you
with all my body drop by drop
and on your white sculptured legs
two vases that drive me crazy
my honey like a maniac, at last, I’ll ejaculate
REPETITIONS THIRD SERIES
Extract
From all we read, only that messenger remained
who was striking the bronze door knob of the temple,
not what he said nor what was said by the angry king,
who was moving his wide sleeves. Only the sound
of the door knob echoes in the dark rooms and
in the empty pedestal of the wooden statue
of the Deer Goddess, which stolen and
on the ship it now travels to Athens — the sound
of the oars along with the sound of the door knob.
Luckily, he said, we retain things like these,
consoling things, unaltered, united
as if we are unaltered too.
THE FUNERAL OF SARPEDON
Zeus is deep in sorrow. Patroklos
killed Sarpedon; and now the son of Menoetios
and the Acheans charge in
to seize and humiliate the body.
But Zeus doesn’t agree with all this.
His beloved boy—whom he left
to perish; that was the Law—
he will at least honor in death.
And, look, he sends Apollo down to the plain
well briefed on what to do with the body.
With reverence and sorrow Apollo lifts
the hero’s body and carries it to the river.
He washes away the dust and the blood;
he closes the terrible wounds, not letting
any trace of them show; he pours
ambrosial perfumes; and dresses him
in gleaming Olympian garments.
He blanches the skin white; and with a pearl
comb combs the jet black hair.
He straightens and arranges the beautiful limbs.
Now he looks like a king, a charioteer—
twenty-five, or twenty-six years old—
at leisure after winning
the prize in a very famous race
with his golden chariot and fleet steeds.
Having finished his task
Apollo sends for the two brothers
Sleep and Death, and orders them
to take the body to Lykia, the rich land.
And toward that rich land, Lykia,
these two brothers Sleep and Death
walk, and when they arrive
at the door of the royal house,
they deliver the glorious body,
then return to their other labors and cares.
And when they received the body there, in the house,
with processions, and mourning, and honors,
and with abundant libations from sacred chalices,
and all things due, the sorrowful burial began.
And after that, experienced workers from the city
and famous carvers of stone came
to build the tomb and the stele.
THE BRIDGE
And again, in the evening, she was possessed by
that gleaming truthfulness of her sadness like something
restful, something of her own, hers only — herself
totally submissive and closed, whole yet totally alone.
She then gathered the rest of the strings in a paper box,
took her weeding tool carefully
with that inevitable moderation and attention to order
and turned on the garden light knowing the consequences
which follow a change in lighting,
calm, retired, acceptable to herself. Soon after, she felt
an exceptional joy in her grief,
she felt that her grief was her attachment to what
had been, to what is, to what will be,
to everything around and above and below
to everything within and without, a silent attachment,
a touch of immortality, a distant and balanced eternal light
that annuls the difference, erases the distance
between here and the beyond, among foreign
languages, nor does it need any translation
from her smile to the star, from the star
to the garden light, from silence to confession,
from a carnation to the weeding tool and to her hand,
from one hour to the next. She then turned on the faucet
and with the garden hose she started watering the flowers,
the trees near and far under the familiar starlight and the
garden light.
In The Name of the Goddess I Summon You
Oil on limbs
perhaps a rancid smell
like here on the oil-press
of the small church
on the rough pores
of the stopped stone.
Oil on the hair
crowned with rope,
and perhaps other perfumes
that we didn’t know
poor and rich
and statuettes offering
small breasts to the fingers.
Oil in the sun
the leaves shivered
when the foreigner stopped
and silence got heavy
between the knees.
The coins fell;
‘In the name of the Goddess I summon you…’
Oil on the shoulders
and the flexing waist
gray legs on the grass,
and this wound in the sun
as the bell chimed for vespers
as I spoke in the courtyard
with a crippled man.
Pleas of the Children
“The houses should not burn.
Bombers one should not know.
The night should be for sleep.
Life should not be a punishment
mothers should not cry
No οne should kill anyone
Everybody should built something
where one could trust the other.
The young should achieve it.
The old as well.“
Bertolt Brecht, Germany (1898 –1956)
ΕΚΛΗΣΕΙΣ ΤΩΝ ΠΑΙΔΙΩΝ
Να μην πυρπολούνται τα σπίτια
να μην γνωρίζει κανείς τα βομβαρδιστικά
η νύχτα να `ναι για τον ύπνο
να μην είναι τιμωρία η ζωή
οι μάνες να μην κλαίνε
κανείς να μην σκοτώνει κανένα
ο καθένας να χτίζει κάτι
εκεί που εμπιστεύεται ο ένας τον άλλο.
Οι νέοι να το καταφέρουν
κι οι γέροι επίσης.
Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη/Translated by Manolis Aligizakis
REPETITIONS SECOND SERIES
Septirhea and Daphnephoria
We said: this year we’ll stay here. Enough of the stupid
trips.
Man’s only wisdom: loneliness. Therefore why we now
run, in the night, with torches, stumbling on rocks, not
knowing
the meaning of such thoughtless symbolisms — the putting up
of the wooden shack
the secret procession with a child up front, the arrow that’s
nailed to the door,
after the burning of the shack, people running to the Tempe
without turning their heads back not even once. And after
the sacrifices
we turn back loaded with oleander branches. The same and
the same every nine years (perhaps so we might forget in
between, and truly we forget). Eh, no,
this time we don’t take a step — thus we said. But when
we heard
the faraway nightly drums and the torch bearers passing
noiselessly in front of the house,
we couldn’t stop ourselves, we all ran to the road, mixed
with the people,
we took part in the fires, the running, the sacrifices and
returned through the Pythian Road towards Delphi, past
midnight, holding
oleander branches although we didn’t have (for years now)
anyone to crown —
and this was a sadness together with pride that no one knew
although they all considered us theirs. The shack was
still smoking at dawn. Returning home, we gazed at
the sky, clear, milky, light-blue, rosy; we noticed on the soil
the tumbled little paper flags, a child’s sandal, a kerchief with
sperm;
we looked in a serene, ecstatic way, with certain vague
politeness and nausea
with the happy tiredness and the blindness of the nightly
vigil,
like actors who took their make-up off, at the end of a nice
presentation, who leave retaining their sleepy hearing,
the futile buzz of the clapping and some bother, as some
gum is retained on their chins, from the graceful beard of
Oedipus or Prometheus, which they had put on for one
more night.
Saving Fall
You’ll carry on with the conversation – you who so often
stopped at the meaning of pause or pauses carrying on
the old dilapidated pushcart (with the dignity of a responsible
day laborer of course)
the furniture of the poor student (who honored you with his
choice)
from one basement to the other or the loft on Periandros Street
being careful as you carried down the narrow rotten stairs
the two unmatched chairs so that they wouldn’t scratch the wall
because the stony merciless landlady stood at the top
behind the railing with crossed arms observing you
when you tumbled down the stairs and landing on the ground you
simply sat on one chair having the other chair on your head
upside down like a strange impenetrable helmet
with four antennae or four legs raised in the sun
Manolis Aligizakis 