Spring Night
He lights the lamp. He wants to do something. He can’t.
The moon shines outside; horses are there and two boats
with guitars. The oarsman must be wearing the yellow
shirt of the dead man. The night is enclosed in distorting
mirrors, the face is ballooned, cut into pieces, melts, and
slips into the thick green waters along with the caterpillars.
He is not the one who laughs inside the water well
Visit
All night long, sleepless,
you promised to go visit.
He looked so frail
like a wilted red carnation.
White walls, immaculate
mirror completely silent
hadn’t seen death yet as
he pulled his hand
from yours like
a spoiled child
keeping his toy to himself.
You promised not to cry
as he let his last breath to
float freely in the void
your tears dripped regret
you didn’t have the courage
to hold his hand and tell him
that you miss him.
For the Shop
He wrapped them carefully, tidily
in green priceless silk.
Roses of rubies, lilies of pearls, violets
of amethyst. He values them as evidence
of his desire, his vision, not as he saw them
in nature and studied them. He will leave them in the safe,
examples of his courageous and skillful work.
When a customer comes into the store,
he takes from their cases other things to sell—superb jewels—
bracelets, chains, necklaces, and rings.
excerpt
town and the prospects. He listened carefully to the details of the
planning. The enthusiasm of his own replies still rang in Jeremy’s
mind.
“Dad, the state is only 13 years old. There’s opportunity everywhere.
East of the mountains, they’re bringing water to the land.
It’s going to bloom and it’s going to make people rich. It’s in the
center of the state, on the river, on the railroad that runs east and
west. They’re already shipping apples to Chicago and back east.
They’ll need a good newspaper. A paper can make a difference in
how that valley develops. The man who owns that paper will be an
influence.”
“And Winifred? Is it right to take your young wife away from all
she’s known, into a wilderness?”
“It is not a wilderness.” Jeremy reached into his breast pocket for
a post card and handed it to his father. Zeb Stone studied the
scene: A few buildings, a handful of carriages, a line of poles, the
blurred image of a man striding across a dirt street that stretched
into an infinity of sagebrush and bare hills. He looked up and contemplated
the club’s spread of gardens, fairways and trees. Jeremy
was determined to go west with or without his father’s approval,
but he ached for the endorsement. The perspiration and the dread
accumulated as he waited. The severity of the look his father
turned on him, his relief when a trace of a smile appeared and his
father offered to help with finances; it was all as clear as the day it
happened.
“As it is, sir, I’m going to use your money” Jeremy told him. “I
haven’t touched the trust fund since I turned 21. I’ll take money
from that and my savings and, if need be, Win will chip in from her
inheritance. We want to do this on our own.”
“If you ever decide to go back into banking, tell me,” Zeb Stone
said. “A growing town will need a good bank.”
Jeremy never dreamed that 25 years later he would turn his
newspaper over to his wife and plunge fully into banking. Winifred
had turned out to be as good a publisher as he was, and a better,
tougher editor. He had stayed out of the paper’s business since
and if you told us that we’d return
to our lively starting point that
has no borders and all are mixed
up in it, the mountains, verdure,
all gigantic and tied together by
certain magical powers, your
first motherland awaits for you
to give you an unexpected glory
that bestowed unto wise men, and
heroes, oh tent people, it will set
the throne of Maharaja for you
and it’ll place in front of you, the
lotus flowers adorned along with
all the holy prophets and ascetics.
We’d then shout at you: we don’t
want you to ruin our festival; we
celebrate the breaking of the chains
of whatever kind, of diamonds or
gold; we’re the delivered ones.
Wail and wail to all motherlands!
And if we have tumbled down
to depths unknown that no other
race ever descended time will
come when we’ll ascend to
immeasurable heights onto
the gleaming heavens; we’re
the race who are meant to erase
the concept of a motherland,
the precious maya of Brahman
the race of which hands weave the joy
of gods and mortals, its miracle
its best surprising deed.
The whole world is a gypsy,
that sits on a throne and using
his hammer and violin, creates
the flawless Ideal; universe turns
into an orchard and a May festival
for our only motherland: earth.
VI
Come, my sweet, sit next to me
and let us remember of the struggle
and the revolution we didn’t start
let’s talk of the world we didn’t change
and for the heroes who lost their lives
let us recount all the excuses
we presented about all of us
who never became heroes
let’s talk of the insignificant toil
and let’s remember the new world
we have never fought to create
come, let’s sing in one voice
for all the incidentals
who didn’t have the courage
to raise a flag or any banner
and for all of us who never made it
to the borders, who didn’t get
injured and who never breathed
the choking air of the hutment.
Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
The big city clocks tremble pushing time
masons step down from the scaffolds and march
the city street workers put their spades on their shoulders
and march on
peace
peace
Walls, houses, train stations
stare, with surprise, at this dark crowd
that shakes the world
to get reborn
they come from mines, ditches, sewers,
from the depth of time riding the bulldozers;
listen to them:
their wheels struggle like the breath of history.
Villagers grab their sickles and march on
the wind buzzes amid the wheat ears, calves
play in the yards
wood pieces and spades sway in the wind
and the roads echo the hurrahs of many people
we are coming
step aside
we descent like an avalanche that becomes bigger
as it rolls down
a superb warmth from a thousand breaths
in the churches candles melt to their ends
the sky dome jolts from the strong heartbeats
we are coming from afar
we are headed far away
we’ve walked in mud and blood
we’ve walked over the bones of our children
we’ve walked for years to reach here
faces marked by the acidity and clever cuts of the future
hands that play with hammers and the fate of the world
peace
excerpt
Petty Officer Joseph Ignatius Carney sat in an empty compartment, staring out sadly at the green and yellow countryside of England. The train chugged through it noisily and slowly. It looked so peaceful. Who could have believed that the country was at war, that it had just been fighting for its very survival like a fish on a hook? Now the worst was over and the battle for Britain won. But the battle for Europe was not going well. The German army had pushed into Yugoslavia and Greece. Yugoslavia had surrendered, and the future for Greece looked grim.
Here in England all of that was a world away. Cows lazily grazed the fresh spring grass. New-born lambs on new-found, nimble legs scampered after shaggy ewes. The first crops were growing in the ploughed fields, and women, girls, young boys, and old men joined farmers in waging their own war against the invidious invasion of weeds. In the few orchards that the train chugged by, the apple and the cherry trees were dressed in blossom like lovely, young spring brides. The April sun was warm, and the faces that turned to watch the train pass noisily by were tanned already. So few were young men’s faces. Many were the so-called Land Girls, thousands of them, recruited from the city to boost farm production to thwart the German blockade of imports brought to the country by sea. Barmaids, waitresses, maids, hairdressers and others working in urban female occupations proved themselves tougher in the fields than the sceptical farmers had imagined. They worked fifty hours a week in summer, forty-eight in winter, ploughing fields, driving tractors, making hay. They undertook the full rigours of harvesting, threshing, and thatching. They also reclaimed land, worked in orchards and market gardens, and though they had to steel themselves to do it, they caught rats as well. As for the men, most of England’s farming labourers were far from their fields and pastures. In other fields their tired, tense faces, rank on rank, were shaded only by their gun-barrels. They were strained and stressed and drained of colour. Or smashed to gory pulp. Or still, limestone grey, like the faces in church effigies, turned towards the blue sky, their eyes closed in the unsought peace of death.
Hermes
Early in the morning Hermes
helped me discover why
I was different
from the statue, tasting as
I was like the abalone.
Individualization
incarnation and
shiny pebbles
by the shore
naked Korae with
the sweetness of fresh grapes
during a summer hespera
purple colored sighs
and the lone martyr who I became
I felt indisposed to uphold
blasphemies of the pious
thus annulling their advice
and turning inward to my roots
the depth of my path I discerned
reaching my catharsis
that the north wind
bestowed unto my body
but not before
I defended the patriot ground,
with my armor:
exquisite gardenia aroma
gills of fishes full of bubbles
and small sponges
that I pulled from
the bottom of the sea
another way
to cleanse the moral impurities
of my soul
excerpt
Warriors Come in Many Shapes
“We all grow up with the weight of history on us.
Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they
do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.”
(Shirley Abbott, Writer)
~~
Ken Kirkby inherited genes from a thousand years of determined and
intelligent men and the clever women who worked beside them. In each
generation, the face of the world inhabited by his ancestors was left
improved. If he feels some pressure to leave his own imprint on his world,
he chooses to do so by inspiring others as he has been inspired; by restoring
what has been spoiled and by righting what is wrong. Justice is an important
word in his vocabulary.
His father, Ken Kirkby, Sr. turned his back on both a fortune and his
influential British steel family as a young man. He left his assured place
in Britain to make a successful life in Australia and eventually returned to
England with a reputation for a sound ability to turn failing companies into
profitable ventures. With World War II on the horizon, he was seconded by
Winston Churchill’s team to transform the venerable but struggling Rover
Motor Company into an efficient, profit-making war machine.
In 1938, he met and married Ken’s mother, Louise May Chesney. Her
father was a respected Spanish industrialist whose family traced their roots
back to Rurik of the Rus, a Dane whose history was recorded in written
form in 746 AD. Ken was born in 1940 and his sister three years later. The
Kirkby and Chesney families left recession strapped Britain for Spain in
1946 and the Kirkby family ultimately settled in the Portuguese village of
Parede, a coastal village south of Lisbon. Their neighbours were diplomats
or professional elite, but Ken’s father preferred to do his own gardening and
knew the children of all his employees by their first names.
Ken’s childhood was unorthodox by any measure. Their family home
on the Avenue of Princes welcomed many of the brightest minds of the
European world at the time, but he ran barefoot with the Gypsy kids, bartered
his drawings in the marketplace and escaped his mother’s restrictions
Manolis Aligizakis 