Passage
Those things he shyly imagined as a student are open,
revealed to him now. And he goes around,
he stays up all night and is led astray.
And as it is (for our art) right,
his new, hot blood is enjoyed by lust.
His body is won over
by devious, erotic drunkenness; his young
limbs give in to it.
Thus, a simple young man
becomes the subject of our attention, and for a moment,
he passes through the High World of Poetry
the sensitive young man with his fresh, hot blood.
I have my life that I want to live. Not revenge — what
another death could erase from the previous death, when
in fact it’s a violent death? What can it add to life? Time
has passed, I don’t hate anymore; have I forgotten? I
don’t know. Indeed I feel certain sympathy for
the murderess: she has passed over great crevices, wisdom
has dilated her eyes and she can see in darkness, she can
see the imperishable, the unachievable, the irreversible.
She sees me.
I too want to see father’s murder under the soothing
generality of death, to forget of him in the wholeness
of death that awaits us too. This night has taught me
the innocence of all the usurpers. We’re all usurpers
of something — of the people, the throne, of Eros or
even of death. My sister the usurper of my only life
and I of yours.
Path to the Obvious
A piece of chalk slowly writes something on the blackboard
from dusk to the next dawn
the same sentence; unfortunately
twenty years in school and still uneducated,
who can read the world book syllable by syllable
image after image
aromatic sounds
lighted inscriptions in the contour of darkness
dark inscriptions on the placenta of light
fate has provided us with bad teachers
with compasses, rulers, protractors
and oh men of Athens, you know
the path to the obvious
is spread by the eyeglasses of logic. You know
what happens to the uneducated,
shoeless man.
excerpt
calling from Emblem. So Tyne was surprised and cheered to hear
Cam’s voice.
“I’ve been trying to reach you ever since Moe called this morning,”
he said, sounding relieved. “Why didn’t you call me right away, Tyne?
Dad would have driven you to the Hat.”
“I couldn’t put him out, Cam … well, to be truthful, I never even
thought about it. I’m so used to riding the bus. But it seemed to take
forever to get here.”
“I hate to think of you making that trip alone as worried as you
must have been. How is your dad?”
Tyne repeated what the doctor had told her, her mother and Aunt
Millie only minutes before – that Jeff stood a good chance of surviving,
but that he may have partial paralysis of his right side. “He has
some movement and feeling in his leg, and his speech is slurred, but
Doctor Sanger thinks the speech will come back in time.”
“I’m glad to hear that, honey. When Moe called me, I feared the
worst. How long will you be there … or is it too early to know?”
“It is too early, Cam.”
“Where are you staying? Is there some place I can call without
bothering the hospital?”
“We’ll be with a family friend. Aunt Millie has obtained permission
for us to take it in turns staying with Dad around the clock.” She
pondered a moment. “Tell you what, Cam. I’ll call Moe tonight and
give her the phone number.”
“Good girl. We’ll talk again tomorrow. And Tyne?”
“Yes?”
There was a brief pause. Then he said clearly and firmly, “Remember
I love you.”
Before she could respond, he hung up.
Tyne stayed at her father’s bedside for a week. Because she was
used to working odd shifts, she insisted that her mother and Aunt
Millie get their normal rest at night while she stayed in the hospital
room. At the end of seven days, the doctor assured them that,
although Jeff ’s recovery and rehabilitation would probably be slow
and tedious he was, at least for the present, out of danger. Tyne,
with ambivalent feelings, returned to Calgary under the care of her…
excerpt
Day after day, page after page, Eteocles devotes all that summer,
fall, and winter, and almost the whole of the next spring, before he
finally has the book totally transcribed. During that year, he hardly
goes out to play and only just manages to find time for his homework.
This is his last year at the elementary level, and next year he will go
to high school.
When he has completed the last page of his hand-written version
of Erotokritos, he takes all the pages he has written and proudly shows
them to his mom and dad and to Nicolas. They don’t say a single
word. What could one say in such a situation? His parents don’t even
congratulate him. Only Nicolas says “bravo” and that is all. No fanfare,
no balloons, no cheers, just a smile from his dad and a smile
from his mom. Perhaps they don’t understand the enormity of such
an accomplishment. Perhaps the value of such work escapes them,
or perhaps they are just too tired from the daily struggle to find food,
to find work, to procure the necessities, to pay the rent. Eteocles’ family
has no house of their own at that time. They left Crete almost penniless,
and the daily labours of the father provide all they have.
Eteocles’ family has never owned properties, neither olive groves
nor grapevines, like most of their relatives had, nor any other income-
producing assets. Eteocles’s father grew in an orphanage, discarded
by his mother, who conceived him when she was seventeen
years while was working as maid in a rich man’s family in the neighbouring
village. As for Eteocles’s mother, his angel, she at least had a
dowry from her father, a Cretan who knew how to look after his
daughters, but he had five of them and could only give each one a
small part of his estate. And even that bit of property Eteocles’ mother
received from her father had been taken over by an auntie, who used
the old house in which Eteocles and Nicolas were born and lived during
their childhood years as barn for her animals.
What does anyone need in this life? It takes Eteocles many years
to understand how to measure his needs and how to decide what
comes first and what comes second and what people must do to have
what they wish for— and what they may miss in the process.
What does Eteocles’s family need at this juncture of their lives?
A house, perhaps, since having your own house is considered …
POEM FOR THE STELE OF OLYMPIA
DESTROYED BY A TEMPEST
excerpt
In the depths of the sky the gleaming stars dimmed,
the unshakable mountain stirred before me
and vanished into the hungry mouth of the sea.
I had believed the power of all fortune
never could be strong enough to topple you,
my beloved relic of a forgotten race.
Deathless Leviathan, accept my lament.
When I gaze on you I cry,
and though you’ve long been our primeval cornerstone
time has now unlocked you, and your vertebrae
lie scattered on the soil, stepped on by dogs.
Oh, the unimaginable rage and curse of god,
the pitiless thunder that always comes down on you,
the earthquakes and tempests that set themselves against
our best achievements and with sudden power
smash down the greatest of them, one upon the other.
https://draft2digital.com/book/3562959
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763513
Hero
The last hero confesses pain
and next door the general
is metal dressed by agile hands
his dazzling accomplishment
lies flat on the church floor
a band of light strapped to virtue
knowledge led by protocol
claims the right of silence
of the tumbled brick or fascia
of the cenotaph to the fallen
tile claims anathema
by brotherhood of generals
and you hold onto your paper flag
not sure if to wave or cry
excerpt
“What’s wrong down there, Tom?”
“Ach it’s yourself, Caitlin.” Tom turned to look at her and Nora with eyes scrunched up against the sun. “Oh they just fished a body out of the harbour.”
Michael, Caitlin thought immediately, and her face paled with fright. “Who… who was it?” she asked in a faltering voice.
“It was your Michael that pulled him out,” Tom declared, as if anxious to be the first to tell her.
“Pulled who out?” Caitlin asked.
“Carney’s youngest boy. Joe-Joe.”
“Is he dead?” Nora asked fearfully.
“I don’t know.” Tom spat tobacco on to the wharf. “Dr Starkey’s down there now.”
“What happened?” Caitlin and Nora, looking down on the boat, could see Michael now. He was bent over in the middle of the group with his hands on his knees.
“Well, I didn’t see it myself,” said Tom. “Seamus Slattery just a while ago came up from the boat saying there was nothing he could do, so he was going to the bar for a drink. As far as he could tell, it seems that young Joe-Joe was fishing over the side of Carney’s boat—your father’s boat—when he fell overboard into the water. Carney was in the galley doing woodwork and he didn’t hear the little fellow calling for help. It was God’s doing that sent Michael Carrick to the boat to ask Carney to do something for your father. He fished Joe-Joe out. I think he jumped in and lifted the boy into one of the rowing boats and then called Carney to bring a rope.”
“Joe-Joe can’t swim then?”
“Oh I dare say he can splash about a bit. But he’s only what? Four? Five? Six? Damned if I can keep track of the youngsters anymore.” Tom spat again. He pushed a gnarled, arthritic hand under his cap and scratched his white head. “I dare say he panicked.”
On the boat Michael straightened up. He saw Caitlin and Nora and waved but he did not smile.
One by one the other men unfolded like ferns and almost hid the slight figure of Dr Starkey. Caitlin saw only the round, bald patch on the back of the doctor’s head. Then someone lifted a bundle wrapped in blankets and carried it over his shoulder from the outer boat across the middle one to the inner boat by the wharf-side. Others reached out hands to help steady the man—Joe Carney himself—as he clambered over the sides of the boats…
excerpt
I possessed neither the strength to stop the torment nor the courage
to try.
– I’m going for more wood.
When I return Larry is flicking lighted matches at Lenore. Her
cheeks are stained with tears.
– Burn, witch!
Larry exits for a pee. Lenore and I face each other across the campfire.
I wonder what it would take to make the poor girl smile, so I use
my roasting stick to scratch a happy face in the dirt. Lenore uses hers
to erase the upturned mouth and replace it with a frown.
– Fee-fi-fo-fum, we hear Larry carolling. Wisely, Lenore retires.
Larry and I decide to sleep outside. We arrange our sleeping bags
around the fire.
– I’m going to move to the States one day, Larry says.
– That would be neat.
– I’m going to join the Marines. Special Forces, probably.
– Wow!
A log tumbles into the flames; a glowing ash disappears into
the star-spangled Washington night. People disappear from our
lives all the time. They move away, promise to write, don’t. They
go wacko, drop dead, find God. You say something stupid and
you’re ostracized for life. It doesn’t take much for us to abandon
each other.
When we were young my mother enrolled Burt and me in free
swim lessons in Stanley Park. The bus ride took an hour each way;
the lessons lasted 20 minutes. Hundreds of kids from East Van sat
shivering on the seawall at Lumberman’s Arch waiting their turn to
blow bubbles in the frigid surf. My brother always pissed in the
water. Later Mom would buy us fish and chips.
– I dreamed about Marilyn Monroe last night, Larry says. His
hands are folded behind his head.
– She’s something, that’s for sure.
– She was bare naked, he said. Just standing there with a tube of
coconut butter, begging, Do my thighs, Larry.
The next day we saw Cindy and Corrine riding in a convertible with
some older guys. They were racing along one of the back roads.
Cindy was standing up in the front seat, arms outstretched,
excerpt
For the first time since he’d been a kid, Ken had no deadlines or other
people’s needs to accommodate. He could sit, smoke and enjoy the flavours
of the sea air, the sound of the gulls, the calm mornings filled with a distant
hum of passing cars filtering down from the Old Island Highway. The
constant rhythm of waves on the pebble beach soothed him as he read late
into the night. The mental kinks slowly started to release.
The luxury of pursuing my thoughts in an academic fashion, waking
when I chose and stopping when I liked was heaven. Initially I was
spinning from Karen’s rejection and had to regiment my mind or the
pain would have driven me crazy. The pain was still there, but now I
was no longer hiding from my thoughts and I took pleasure in the way
one thought could morph into something else incredibly interesting,
but totally unrelated.
We humans fancy that we have evolved this elevated thing called
‘reason’ when compared to ‘sense’—that is, coming from the senses,
which has been developing over millions of years—reasoning is in the
kindergarten stages. When we talk of premonitions, or gut feel, that
also relates to our senses. We have survived from the beginning as
single cell organisms to this time and place, no thanks to reason, but
through our senses.
When Ken Kirkby moved to Bowser at the end of 2001, he was seeking
complete anonymity. His landlords, Ken and Jeanine Harris, were pleasant
and helpful but respectful of his desire for privacy. If Kirkby appeared in the
yard, they were quick to open a conversation, but other than that, they didn’t
intrude. Over the months, the three became friends as well as neighbours
and the Harris’s encouraged him as he established his programme to gain
back his health.
Ken Harris had retired from a high-pressure career in Vancouver. He
was a physically active person, who kept an eye on the community and
occupied his enquiring mind through study. He enjoyed engaging Kirkby
in conversations, which bordered on debates, and ranged far and wide. As
spring approached and the weather warmed, the two Kens would sit together
in the morning sipping their coffee, and sharing Kirkby’s cigarettes (Harris
claimed he had given up smoking) while discussing whatever surfaced …
Manolis Aligizakis 