Πικρή Πραγματικότητα

Ειρηναίος Βρούσγος

Katerina Gogou

Wheat Ears-Selected Poems

Denial

Hesitant moonlight entered

to sit on the night table

outline of her conflagrated body

lain on the deserted bed

autumn breeze

a shameless raider

sneaked through

the half open window

to observe her two thighs

softly rubbing against each other

two fingers travelled over

her wet mound

involuntary conspiring wind

and window shutter

created the sorrowful creak

that brought her to consciousness

heart pulse bounced off

the gleaming mirror to fall

dead onto the carpet crying

unfair life even this dreamy

pleasure you denied me.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S

Yannis Ritsos-Poems, Volume III

Lighthouse Keeper

Other times, during the night, after I light the lamp,

I stand out on the balcony waiting for a ship not that

it was to see the lighthouse, or change its route, but

a ship that was coming here, to moor here, and not

to avoid a great danger; but with a clear destination

here; and to hear its anchor, as if a door was opening,

after being closed for a long time and into which I too

was locked; and I didn’t know how to discern the creak

of the door; I didn’t know what gesture my hands

might make, what expression my face might have. 

I already imagined the masts of the ship in balance

              with the lighthouse;

the passengers with their suitcases who jumped on

these rocks; their talk addressing me, equal to mine,

not any admiration or thankfulness at all, especially

not any gratitude, with their foreign accent, with that

foreign flair just to save ourselves; not that.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK

Ραινερ Μαρία Ρίλκε

Neo-Hellene Poets, an Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry, 1750-2018

Poem by George Seferis

STROPHE

Moment, sent by a hand

that I had so much loved

you reached me almost at dusk

like a black dove.

The road shone before me

soft breath of sleep

at the end of a secret feast

moment, grain of sand,

that you alone kept

the tragic clepsydra whole

silent, as though it had seen Hydra

in the heavenly orchard.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763513

Wheat Ears-Selected Poems

Justification

I strode over

fallen branches

victims of last night’s

merciless wind

I listened to music in tune

with endless perfection

when I heard

the chirp of the bird

raised my head

saw it, a chickadee

shivering, singing, laughing

on the tree limb

justification

that I was alive

this morning

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S

Res Communis Omnium

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume III

Lighthouse Keeper

You see, it isn’t inactivity or forgetfulness, on

the contrary; you could call it a responsible isolation,

chosen by you so that the whole of you might exist

in the void.  I don’t know. No, don’t stay, the lighthouse

light is tiring, distant, useless.                  

              Don’t stay.

Sometimes I too shift, in order to get the sense that

I exist, from my motionless position to the multi-

motional position of a ship, of a voyager, of a castaway,

to notice, in the night, the importance of my position seen

from the opposite side when our sets, made of carton paper,

are destroyed by the last thunderbolt and the stage is left

with only the dead electricians under the broken staircase

and cut ropes, when the ships sink and angry people gaze at

the empty ocean, like a gigantic zero, in the wrath

of the elements, trying to hang onto a plank, because,

of course, they can’t get a hold of the lighthouse rays.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK