ELYSIAN FIELDS

Bodies extremely tired

bent, cut in half

souls deserted them, walk alone

on the grass slowly, open books laid

the bodies lied down, crunched

distorted and they appear

at the far end holding roses and with

the dream and passion they go

dust to dust the bodies become

yet far in the horizon, like suns

the souls go down dressed in sky

or like simple smiles on lips

An Old Man On the River Bank

                                  For Nani Panagiotopoulos

And yet we have to consider how to proceed.

To feel is not enough, nor to think, nor to move

nor to risk your body in the ancient embrasure,

when the boiling oil and molten lead groove the walls.

And yet we have to consider to what direction we go ahead

not the way our pain desires it and our hungry children

and the chasm of our comrades’ call from the opposite shore

not even the darkened light whispers it in the improvised hospital,

the pharmaceutical shine on the young man operated on at noon

but in some other way perhaps I mean to say that

the long river that emerges from the great lakes enclosed deep in Africa

and at sometime it was god and then it turned into road and benefactor and judge and delta that is never the same as the wise old people taught

and yet it always remains the same body,

the same bed and the same Point, the same orientation.

I don’t want anything else but to speak simply, let this grace be granted to me.

Because even our song we’ve loaded with so much music that it slowly sinks

and our art we’ve decorated so much that its features are eaten by the gold

and it is time that we say our few words because tomorrow our soul sails away.

If pain is human, we are not human just to suffer pain

that’s why I contemplate so much these days about the great river

this image that goes forward between herbs and verdure

and beasts that graze and drink and people who sow and harvest

and even in great tombs and small plots of the dead.

This current that leads its way and that is not at all different from the blood of men

and from the eyes of men when they stare straight ahead without any fear in their hearts

without the everyday shiver about the little things or even the great ones

when they stare straight ahead like the wayfarer who is used to find his way guided by the stars

not like us, the other day, looking at the enclosed orchard of a sleepy Arabic house

behind the lattice, the fresh garden changed shape, growing larger and smaller

changing as we looked at it; we changed the shape of our desire and our hearts

at high noon, us the patient dough of a world that pushes us away and kneads us,

caught in the ornamented nets of life that was right

and then it turned into dust and sank in the sand

leaving behind it only that indecipherable dizzying sway of a tall palm tree.

Η Ελένη/Helen

Δεν κοίταξα άλλο· ούτε άκουγα σχεδόν τις πολεμόχαρες κραυγές τους —
εγώ, ψηλά, στα τείχη, πάνω απ’ τα κεφάλια των θνητών, αέρινη, σάρκινη,
χωρίς ν’ ανήκω σε κανένα, χωρίς να ’χω κανενός την ανάγκη,
σα να ’μουν (ανεξάρτητη εγώ) ολόκληρος ο έρωτας, — ελεύθερη
από το φόβο του θανάτου και του χρόνου, μ’ ένα άσπρο λουλούδι στα μαλλιά μου,
μ’ ένα λουλούδι ανάμεσα στα στήθη μου, κι ένα άλλο στα χείλη να μου κρύβει
το χαμόγελο της ελευθερίας.
Μπορούσαν
κι από τις δυο πλευρές να με τοξεύσουν.
Έδινα στόχο
βαδίζοντας αργά πάνω στα τείχη, σχεδιασμένη ακέρια
στον χρυσοπόρφυρο ουρανό της εσπέρας.
Κρατούσα τα μάτια κλεισμένα
για να ευκολύνω μια εχθρική χειρονομία τους — γνωρίζοντας στο βάθος
ότι κανείς δεν θα τολμούσε. Τα χέρια τους τρέμαν απ’ το θάμβος
της ομορφιάς και της αθανασίας μου —
(ίσως τώρα μπορώ να προσθέσω:
δεν τον φοβόμουν το θάνατο, γιατί τον ένιωθα πολύ μακριά μου).

I didn’t watch anymore I hardly even heard their

             war-thirsty cries –

high up on the walls I was above the heads of mortals airy

             made of flesh

belonging to no one without need of anyone

as if I was independent absolute love – free

from fear of death and time with a white flower

             in my hair

with a flower between my breasts and another in my lips

              hiding for me

the smile of freedom

             They could

have shot at me from both sides with their arrows

              I presented

an easy target walking slowly on the walls completely intact

              in the golden purple evening sky

              I kept my eyes closed

to make every hostile gesture from them easy – knowing

              deep inside

that none of them would dare Their hands trembled with awe

              at my beauty and immortality –

(maybe I can add now that

I didn’t fear death because I felt him so far away)

THE INITIATE

The initiate dressed in white will always dwells in caves

and the oleanders will redden behind him

the pebbles sprinkled by the holy rain

the whole gorge that follows.

I also go near with my serpent-self

the estuary of passion.    

My soles — the last lovers —

carry me lightly

as if I had no heaviness in my consciousness.

The one who attracts me stops, thin,

dressed in white and having a ponytail;

he smells a strong odor like devil rosemary

while he exhumes the beautiful fragrance of a dead angel.

The leafage of the carob-tree

hides something quivering and invisible

felt only by that quivering and invisible sense

that we have inside us. 

The initiate is very thin;

His pants only balloon a little

in the front and a little in the back

as flesh air fills his shirt.

The sponsor of earth lowered me

with the unanswered questions in my tongue

to a cave that instead of a mouth

had a hole in the sky.

Under it stood

the provider of the inconceivable

with his palms turned upwards

he milked the light-blue.

He stirred a little;

was perhaps the unforeseen from above

that pushed him

or the earth, slave of precision

that shook him from his foundations?

He smiled with eyes, with teeth of metal

then I thought I had skipped

something very important before

time and day had given birth to me.

Thus I firstly asked about time

which passes by quickly these days

with wings that only have time

to caress me, the wilted one.   

When you’re young — the translator

of the timeless explained to me —

you’re by nature satiated

as if you gorged yourself

in an extra rich meal.

Full of endless future

one hour seems as the whole feast

seasons have no end

eons separate fruits from snow

stodgy seconds sit heavy over the weeks.

The newly found body

isn’t about to get hungry

— truly how did they store so many

moments under the fresh skin? —

the newly recruited body

won’t get hungry anymore.

Only later, when the storage facility  

starts to empty of life

and fills with insecurity

what is five years, you might say,

I didn’t even get their smell

while all along with more bulimia

you swallow the half-chewed mouth-fulls

from the leftovers of your time-portion.

We walked out of the cave

and we felt as reborn

as if made of stones and soil.

Half as a blessing half as a punishment

he wrapped my aged body with aroma.

Then I understood what I had skipped:

it doesn’t relate to my birth

but to a death I hadn’t mourned yet

a death that I hadn’t died yet. 

WAITING

Like drought, for rain;

Like a famished one, for a morsel of food;

Like one drowning, for a rescuer;

Like one dying, for rebirth . . .

I am waiting for you.

H. S. Shiva Prakash, India

From: “Like Earth to Stars”,
(Poems 2008–2014)

ΠΕΡΙΜΕΝΟΝΤΑΣ

Σαν η ξηρασία τη βροχή

ο πεινασμένος μια μπουκιά ψωμί

ο πνιγμένος το σωτήρα του

ο πεθαμένος την αναγέννηση του

σε περιμένω

Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη//Translated by Manolis Aligizakis