In Turbulent Times

excerpt

‘Right, Joe. And even with the tractors and the rest, Michael and Danny Boylan are still finding it difficult to cope. They’re working long, hard hours every day.’
‘They could bring in a couple of land girls,’ Joe suggested teasingly.
‘They’re not that desperate,’ Caitlin retorted. ‘A lot of farmers don’t want city girls in the fields. I don’t know of any around these parts.’ Then Caitlin leaned forward in her chair with a serious look on her face. ‘Joe, I’m glad you’re here and Michael isn’t. I want to talk to you about something important.’
‘What would that be?’
‘Nora. She’s not happy, is she?’
Joe felt uneasy. ‘Oh she seems content enough.’
‘Joe, you’re not being honest with me,’ Caitlin interrupted. ‘You and I both know she should never have married Liam Dooley. Oh he’s been a good husband. I’m not complaining on that score. He worships her. He’ll do anything for her. Maybe he does be out a lot, but he’s a teacher and he’s involved in a lot of out-of-school activities. Local history societies, the WEA, and all that. But he’s not the man for Nora. He’s twenty-two years older than she is. He’s set in his ways, and they’re not Nora’s ways. He’s stuffy and fussy and a creature of habit. Nora needs someone who’ll … who’ll open doors and windows and let her fly. If you see what I mean.’
‘I do, Mrs Carrick.’
Caitlin got up to pour tea into two cups on the kitchen table and added milk and sugar. ‘I’ll be glad when the war’s over and rationing ends,’ she said. ‘Will you have a scone, Joe? Or a slice of treacle bread and butter? Home-made country butter.’
‘No thanks, Mrs Carrick.’ Joe accepted the proffered cup of tea.
‘Joe, why did Nora marry Liam Dooley?’ Caitlin asked unexpectedly.
Joe was taken by surprise. ‘I suppose she discovered that she loved him. They were working together at …’
‘Blethers, Joe. I want an honest answer. And I know she would have told you. You above all people.’
Joe, put on the spot, tried drinking tea to cover his discomfiture. ‘Haven’t you asked Nora herself? You’re her mother.’
‘But not a good mother,’ Caitlin declared with commendable honesty. ‘She’d be more likely to confide in Michael than in me, but she hasn’t. Not in this case. Nora and I have never been all that close. Not as close as a mother and an only daughter ought to be. We get on badly, she and I.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562904

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270

Kariotakis – Polydouri, The Tragic Love Story

What Can I Say to You
What can I say to you, oh autumn, when you rise
from the lights of the city up to the clouds?
Hymns, symbols, poetry all familiar frosty
flowers of the mind flow onto your hair.
A giant, you appear like an emperor’s spectrum
on the road of bitterness and recollection;
with your golden greatcoat’s fringe you scatter
leaves and faces of stars upon the soil
you, the angel of decay, master of death
the shadow which in a few imaginary steps
occasionally you slowly flap your wings
to write question-marks on the horizon.
I yearn, oh shivering autumn, for the hours
for this forest’s trees, the lonely bust
and as the branches fall onto the soil at autumn
I’ve come to let myself into your holy ardor

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562951

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763459

Introspection

Beta

I baptized my life in the holy
loneliness of memory
that kept me
on the margins of logic
what’s the difference, you said,
from one step to another
when Hades, experienced,
exclusive and beyond the flesh,
holds a sickle in one hand and
a smiling ladybug on the other
and I said,
my only concern is the noise
of the heliotrope
during the sundown and
I baptized my life
in the holy shallowness
of the ephemeral and
in the depths of strange ideals
bloodied by the essence of man
thud of a shield on the daily axe
that balanced the echo of a bird’s
chirp with the resistance
of the tree branch that stirred too
I, the mortal, held up my destiny
in my two moistened palms

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763777

Ugga

eleven
The Black Myth
and the White
of generations
and races
became history
Hysteria became Myth
half of them forgot their origin
the rest of their destination

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676370X

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume III

21st of November
Another Sunday. Headache.
Too many cigarettes. Smoke. The windows
don’t open.
I don’t have but a week of rain and shells of cracked
almonds.
The faint light through the window; six pieces of ice.
The wick of the lamp, I don’t know, looks like inverted
silence. I count the squares of the blanket. All day long
I think that a basket of bread is nothing but a basket
of bread. I contemplate on this though I can’t believe it
because, why the buttons of our shirts get loose and
when the nights walk out in the roads, how do we find
the nails of the stars in the holes of the washrooms
every morning?

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

Troglodytes

III
Shadows of the living dead
calligraphically dangling
from the turrets of the castle
tortured aspirations hanging
from the insignia of palaces
groans hymned by untamed heroes
in the sunless dungeons into
which the brave becomes braver
and the weak become weaker.
Choir and its antiphony, two opposing
rivulets yet both trickling to the same river
merge into the most accepting ocean.
Kneel and forever fear me,
the day’s command laments
kneel and forever fear me,
the greediest ghetto decrees
kneel and forever fear me,
the ancient symbol commands
kneel and forever fear me,
decrees the greediest headmaster
with his golden tiara and
the gleaming chasuble.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186583

Tasos Livaditis – Selected Poems

Perverted Passion
Someday I’ll remember something so nice; it’ll be
autumn in that narrow side street with the glass shops, where
father sold dream books after he went bankrupt — since then
I never got out of the dream, although I was cold; at least I could
fall back onto my perverted passion: melancholy or crowding.
Because, let’s be honest, I never loved anybody and this tender
glance of mine was just for personal use
like the immortality of the poets.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562930

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763831

Titos Patrikios

VII
From the badly stuccoed walls of twilight
the oil, the kitchens of the poor houses,
the orphanage, the groomed village boys
of the stars,
life never stops coming like heavy rain
of flags and wheat.
Our glance, a fish with excellent memory
swims in the tight veins of the sky.
You love the marble, the clay, the old freedom
of the trees, all the elements and their combinations
all the geometry of the stars —
you love not to love
but to carry your love further.
You love life.
You love motion, a blind insect, an animal
from the other side of time that has lost you,
you love all the dirt path we’ve passed together.
You love man.
You love sadness, a spring that widens the contour
of lips, two gnarled, forgotten hands,
you know and love man
so that you will gather drop by drop
seed after seed
stone after stone
an act after an act
his true self
scattered amid the pollen and rivers
lost amid the furniture and movie theaters.
They run, they run with a few sobs in their embrace
to get satiated by the leftovers of the wind
to fool the cold with their rags of truth —
no I’ll never be able to see the fluid metal of his enclosed
hands in every man again
a life overworked by life.
We must march on.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562972

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

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

Poetry 1948
this season
of the civil war
is not time
for poetry
if something
is written
it is as if
it was written
on the other side
of death
announcements
for this reason
my poems
are so sad
(Besides, when weren’t they?)
and they are
especially
just a few

https://draft2digital.com/book/3744799#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734

Hours of the Stars

Christening
The parents remember
the long faces of grandfather and grandmother
and they feel guilty
how can you call
Adeadatos instead of Theodoros
and Precious instead of Diotima
as if the godparents were
demons and pagans?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763408