Katerina Anghelaki Rooke, Selected Poems

17th DAY or ANOTHER DAY

Quietness on the first line today

only they didn’t mention how many

scorched bodies they buried in the sand. 

I wondered whether the desert

rejects corpses of foreigners

like our desolate bodies.

Twilight. I read letters from

the days between the two World Wars.

Pasternak, Rilke, Tsvetayeva

correspond and kiss each other with words

not knowing whether they’ll ever meet.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763521

Wheat Ears, Selected Poems

Owls

He climbed up stairs

wearing an empty saucepan

on his head he wanted to call

the muses over let them

spread benevolence and arts

to rabble but the gardenias

folded up and the finches balked

so without any followers

he stood

looking down as less and less

men remained in the plaza until

he plied his speech and rats

started dancing and the owls

who know wisdom shut

their eyes in embarrassment

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

Constantine P. Cavafy – Poems

SOPHIST LEAVING SYRIA

Distinguished sophist    you, who are now leaving Syria

planning to write    about Antioch

it is commendable    to refer to Mevis in your work.

The famous Mevis    who is undeniably

the handsomest young man    and most loved

in all of Antioch.    No other young man

leads the same life,   none is paid

as much as he is.    To have Mevis

only two, or three days    often they give him

as much as one hundred staters.—   I said, in Antioch;

but also in Alexandria,   even in Rome

there is no young man    as desired as Mevis.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1723961833

Γιώργος Κ. Καραβασίλης, Τέσσερα μικρά μαδριγάλια

Το κόσκινο's avatarTo Koskino

ΑΠΝΟΙΑ

Στον πάπυρο της πεταλούδας
Η απόσταξη των τοπίων.

ΣΑΡΚΩΣΗ

Σε χάδι μωβ κυλά η Άνοιξη
Και στης καρδιάς το φύλλο
Ανεμοπύρωμα η βροχή
Βαθύ πουλί
Χώμα το χώμα
Σπόρο το σπόρο
Κραυγή την κραυγή
Καρφώνει στεφάνι.

ΑΚΟΥΩ ΤΟ ΚΡΙΘΑΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΓΗΣ

Ακούω το κριθάρι της γης
Στις καλύβες του κάμπου.
Ας πιούμε τη μοσχοβολιά μιας μέρας
Σ’ αυτό το καταφύγιο της λυχνισμένης νύστας.

ΓΥΜΝΟ ΠΟΔΙ, ΦΥΛΛΟ ΕΞΟΧΙΚΟ

Ω γυμνό πόδι, φύλλο εξοχικό,
Πώς ξεδιψάς το καλοκαίρι στο κορμί,
Σε θαλασσινό αφρό
Πουρπουρίζει το στήθος σου.
Μη μου μιλήσεις! μη σε τελειώσω.

*Από τη συλλογή “Η γραφή και το μαχαίρι” που συμπεριλαμβάνεται στο συλλογικό “Ποιήσεις 1963-2003”, εκδ. Γαβριηλίδης, Αθήνα 2004.

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Titos Patrikios – Selected Poems

GYPSIES

The gypsies live next to the cemetery,

with no horses, moulded

with this soil which they don’t desire.

Funeral processions pass by their tents

the trees point to the same sky

and the creek where they meet is a rubbish dump.

What happened to the guitars

the river, the horse rider?

Something flashes, two knives, two bodies

the cop whistles — no, it’s nothing.

The gypsies have regular ID papers these days.

They talk their language around

the heating bucket every evening:

how was the day, what they bought,

what they sold and the dead

in their graves don’t understand them.

The dead speak the language of the dead

they want someone to tell their future

no one understands them.

What happened to the guitars,

the river, the horse rider?

Each of us wants something

while we speak our own language.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L1TJNNF

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

POEM BY IOULITA ILIOPOULOS

LONG BED

A line of baby cribs. Large windows properly shut.

Dim light. Neither my baby nor lullaby.

Only some older people whisper under the blankets

there was a ship, there was a ship that never travelled

under the mattress and in the place of a talisman

the yearning of a mother who, may still come.

To bring the hug. To bring the true home in his embrace.

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

Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

In Memoriam
 
 
      One day we’ll receive a letter from another era; we’ll
put it on the table and while being embarrassed we’ll
think how foreign we still feel; words will look like
ghosts, you may find an invitation in the street, although
we won’t have any memory left, cafes will resemble
landscapes of the beyond and I, the only fool, will get up
and scream: “comrades”, as if answering to the last silence;
      the calendar will show October with the wilted leaves
and the uprisings.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Red in Black

Victor’s March

Among decapitated houses

resembling toothless sculls

we marched in their towns

tumbled buildings devastated

by smart bombs outsmarting

thoughtful animals

and we sang marching paeans

band played freedom songs

for the sarcastically smiling youths

who had implanted deep in their souls

the plan for revenge, youths

who in groups of three or four

planned their act of defiance

youths who had dreams

of killing us by the thousands

shoeless youths with grand dreams

that one day they’d become jihadists

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1073530663

«Μυστήριο 29 | Ελευσίνα – Ωμό Μουσείο» στο Μουσείο Μπενάκη (Πειραιώς 138)

ellas's avatarΕΛΛΑΣ

Λίγο πριν την έναρξη της επίσημης χρονιάς του τίτλου της 2023 Ελευσίς Πολιτιστική Πρωτεύουσα της Ευρώπης, η πόλη της Ελευσίνας συστήνεται στο ευρύ κοινό με την Έκθεση Μυστήριο 29 | Ελευσίνα – Ωμό Μουσείο, στο Μουσείο Μπενάκη (Πειραιώς 138). Ένα εμβληματικό έργο της διοργάνωσης, στο πλαίσιο της θεματικής «Άνθρωποι – Κοινωνία», για τις ψηφίδες που συνθέτουν το φαινόμενο ΕΛΕΥΣΙΝΑ τωρινά και αλλοτινά.

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Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume II

A DOG IN THE NIGHT

I don’t know the roots: the way they stir in the soil before

             sprouting.

Perhaps, later on, they resemble the magnetic shadows of the branches

             of an ancient garden

that stir invisibly in the moist soil, during the twilight, when

             the first star

shivers in its ambivalence, polite and diaphanous as if asking for

              everyone’s forgiveness.

                                                    I have often seen,

of course, exposed roots still green

and tender or totally dry — olive tree roots, cypress roots,

              heath roots

and other roots of smaller plants — as if they coupled and

froze at a glance. Thus frozen, they aren’t concerned with your

glance anymore, your thought, your curiosity

nor for their ancient or current pain. Strange roots, hermetic,

             serene, entwined

in a shape of agony, carelessness or neutral intensity like

those roots we once worked on and created table decors or

cute little statuettes, carefully and persistently taking advantage

of the various knots or veins of the wood or its random

            branching

(we felt truly proud of these) or sometimes

we left them in their natural solid shape,

finished, frozen, indecipherable (called it, our shape)

an entwined scheme that resembled the glance of the one

             observing it,

agreeing with their indisputable shape —

like a sleeping virgin or a stooped dog

or a ship hauled up from the sea floor — a dog better yet.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851M9LTV