ROMIOSINI
They sat under the olive trees in early afternoon
sieving the gray light with their big
fingers
they took off their cartridge belts and measured the
anguish fitting the path of night
how much bitterness fits in the wild mallow’s knot
how much courage in the eyes of a shoeless child
holding up the flag
Past its time the last swallow remained in
the plains
weighed himself in midair like a black band
on the sleeve of autumn
Nothing else remained Only the burnt up
houses smoldering
Excerpt
…because one switch was turned against the direction of the engines
and Mike hadn’t seen it. He felt as if that splashing of the stone in the
little pool sounded as if someone had slapped him on the face, and he
accepted it with forbearance and patience, like another lesson in the
work he was doing for the big train company. Mike suddenly felt the
need to hide somewhere so others couldn’t see him as he was leaving
with a lowered head as if he had been defeated in the afternoon battle
of survival.
Time flew, and eventually Mike went home, where he narrated
the event to his wife and son, who started laughing at the imaginary
sight of a train engine on the ground. Mike felt a little lighter, and he
too started laughing without knowing why.
The Lost 1%
Finally you turned me into yourself, my love!
Or perhaps I’ve been this way all along unable to answer the same way when they tell me “I love you”. Unable to say, “me too…”, or “I also love you.”
The phrase almost reaches my lips but is not stated.
To observe other men with that sad and full of agony glance, the one I noticed in your eyes for a long time, and not being able to answer.
Now I can understand what you felt.
I feel the same way.
Now, I know what it means for the other person to expect something from your lips and you unable to utter a word.
And it is not that you don’t love the person, it’s not that you don’t care for them.
The opposite, you care and you hurt more so. But that 1 % that is missing, that you miss and without it the word isn’t said.
That 1 % you know you won’t ever find.
That, as if you came faulty out of the factory and you miss something, what you’ll never acquire and as a result you’ll never be able to give it to anyone.
And you’ll remain like Sisyphus to go up and down the mountain with the weight of love on your back, forever searching to unload it and to offer it somewhere.
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But there will never be anyone to lighten up your load no one will ever walk along with you up the mountain and no one will ever give you a hand just to stop you from slipping down the slope.
Because simply you can’t grasp onto anybody’s hand you can’t grasp onto anything.
Stratis Thalasinos In the Dead Sea
…We are all like the Dead Sea
many fathoms lower than the surface of the Aegean.
Come with me and I’ll show you the landscape
In the dead Sea
there are no fish
there is no seaweed
nor sea urchins
there is no life.
There are no alive creatures
that have stomach
to feel hunger
that nourish nerves
to feel the pain,
THIS IS THE PLACE GENTLEMEN!
In the Dead Sea
contempt
is the property
of no one
other than the mind.
Heart and thought
congeal in salt
that’s bitter
they mix with
the mineral world.
THIS IS THE PLACE GENTLEMEN!
In the Dead Sea
enemies and friends
children and wife
and relatives
go and find them.
They are in Gomorrah
in the sea floor
very happy
and don’t expect
any message.
GENTLEMEN,
we carry on with our tour
many fathoms under the surface of the Aegean.
Requiem I
Difficult years of hunger and persecution
experiences that flowed together like water
then a door opened to our north
and we all scattered like dry leaves.
Yet, father, I now know you well
I see that cheap words and useless happiness
never touched your life, now that
your presence burdens me less and less
with each passing day.
Caricature
A bad imitation of a human,
faceless, like the company
he served, arrived and
hiding the packaged freedom
silently in his pockets
deaf freedom choked
from the excess lard he had
consumed in their last feast
sorrowful leftover of our old
glory and I, saddened by
the momentary loss of logic
leaned and smelled the tiny
jasmine flower, letting its
aroma fills my nostrils
emotional that I had become
to the point of tears: then,
it wasn’t far away anymore,
it wasn’t impossible. It was
here on the dusty sidewalk
here it was the Heavens
into which I surely entered
Full Moon
Nothing, nothing from you, oh sky,
anywhere I held, I tumbled noisily down
from your airy ceiling with the shells
the rusty bunch of your stars.
A disproportional moon rises inside me.
It swells dangerously on my hilltops.
It’ll rise a full moon that shatters me.
Berutiano
(Let’s not forget of Alfonso Allais)
I am flabbergasted by this girl’s vast knowledge! Is she from Cairo or Alexandria? I’d lie to you. Regardless, as she says, she completed her fine education in one European college (catholic of course) in Cairo or Alexandria. With such dedication and endless information, she talks of the teaching personnel and what she owes to them. Pere Magannat, mere Aklantan (Ann Merntez) and mere Vitsialis. The brother d’ Aisance! Fils Tik, doesn’t hesitate to add continuously and she teaches me of Europe with all its secrets and details, true European, even though she’s an Afrikaner.
202 WHEAT EARS
Festivities
There were many dead
those leaden days.
Sorrowful festivities
eulogies, priest always
controlled the tears of women
with his fingers signaling
in front of the altar
matins, red dawns
sometimes a lone crow
wished us a better future
amid prickly pear trees
while daffodils insisted
to always bloom come
each optimistic March
The Satrapy
How unfortunate, though you are made
for great and beautiful deeds
your unjust fate always denies you
encouragement and success.
Worthless habits, pettiness
and indifference distracts you.
And what a horrible day when you give in
(the day you let yourself give in),
and you set out on the road to Susa,
you approach the monarch Artaxerxes
who favours you with a place at his court,
and offers you satrapies and such.
And you accept them in despair.
These things that you don’t want.
Your soul craves other things, yearns for other things:
the praise of the people and the sophists,
that difficult and priceless “Well Done”
the Agora, the Theatre, and the Laurels.
Will Artaxerxes give you these things?
Can your Satrapy provide them?
And what sort of life will you live without them?
Manolis Aligizakis 