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.
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
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
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
But their censure didn’t weaken her resolve. She savoured my father’s embarrassment — and cursed his having been conceived every step of the way home. He drank with old navy buddies at one of the Canadian Legion branches and foolishly denied doing so. He attempted to disguise the alcohol on his breath with Halls Cough Drops. Tobacco fumes clung to his clothes like an invisible lint. Sometimes my mother alleged the scent of woman. On occasion, it was true, my father would take off for a few days —to where, no one knows. Going absent without leave guaranteed an intensified resumption of their conflict at some future date. The air in our house crackled in anticipation of the rematch. Once, to regain entry, he claimed to have gone angling with friends.Mymother circled him warily, a dog sniffing a fire hydrant. – Lying bastard! Punishment often entailed his eviction from their bedroom. Banishment could stretch from three days to three months, depending. He appeared relieved to be sentenced to an air mattress on the living- room floor. Because mybrother Burt and I often took myfather’s side, it was self-serve in the kitchen until a truce was reached. Our body weights fluctuated accordingly. I viewed my father’s carousing like this: he was born during the First World War and orphaned in the Depression. He spent the best part of his 20s fighting the Second World War. I reckoned the occasional disappearance was his way of making up for lost time. People sometimes remarked that my parents seemed to have little in common. This may have been the case. But there had to be a reason they were able to cohabit for as long as they did. I think they were joined together, as many unions are, by the sum of their unfulfilled expectations, and because as the years passed, options decreased and habits fossilized. My parents, you see, were either in love or at war. Rancour seemed an aphrodisiac. There was no Switzerland, no neutral ground. It was the one thing they seemed to agree on: the enemy of love is indifference. My mother, in anticipation of their evening fete, had passed the afternoon tethered to the dresser. Her features had been transformed by …
Politicos We mapped policy algorithms piercing through modern pointless void after partisan campaigns dubious races swayed by oafs and army chiefs egos swollen whales heard hollow promises affected fervor lists implying god’s locale and we called the vain politico for a crumb of substance his argument was adamant the god we sought is dead and the masses gamboled joyous in contention and agreement
THEN what else is the future but our true motherland since the dream goes that direction and when we die we’re ahead of yesterday, dead in the great tomorrow, same as when mothers to be still look at the engagement ring on their finger in awe, we’re, in tears and already walking toward time.
XII Unprofitable route What goes on with the rudder? The boat inscribes circles and not one seagull XIII Sick Fury She has no eyes the serpents she held eat her hands XIV This column has a hole do you see Persephone? XV The world sinks hang on it will leave you alone in the sun XVI You write the ink lessened the sea increases
Coal When the sun was scorching all earth dwellings the voice of the coal seller was heard, a sweaty man promoting his black merchandise, his treasure trove for people’s heaters, coal made of olive tree wood, good heating coal some bought while the sun up on the horizon smiled ironically for coal seller who at the end of summer had brought the cold in people’s minds and the wine flask and the chestnuts on top of the burning stove, thoughtful villagers taking care of their winter needs justified the coal seller, who in the summertime, sweaty and tired as he was selling his black merchandise to the wise villagers concerned with the cold days and nights of winter and you said, he too had tied an anchor around his ankle like a donkey fastened onto his predestined space-time.
Manolis Aligizakis 