Time and Light
We are unborn
all of us and each of us
in the consciousness of timelessness
the embryo of the abyss
coiled in the wrath of nostalgia
fingerprints of loneliness
the sob of tomorrow
the cell of nothingness.
The time and light choke
they dream of a leap into the unknown
they gather the winds that burst
an arrow by an unknown hand aims
at the origin of the young age
and the innocence of destiny becomes history.
Excerpt
“That’s an awkward and difficult subject,” she said. “I don’t want to talk
about it right now.”
Miloo became the central focus of his life and as their friendship deepened,
Ken confessed that he liked her – but far more than the word implied.
He liked her very deeply.
“You can’t like me that much,” she said. “You come from one world and
I come from another and there is no hope that we could ever be more than
just passing friends. It would be nothing but trouble for everybody.”
Ken felt a familiar rebel anger stirring in him. “Why? Did somebody
make a rule?”
“Yes,” she said. “Those are the rules.”
“But if the rules are bad, do you still accept them?”
“It’s everybody,” she said. “It’s everywhere you turn. That’s the way it is.”
“Well, I don’t accept it.”
“You’ll get into a lot of trouble.”
“I don’t care. It seems that all the best things in my life are trouble and
I just won’t accept it.”
Ken’s father noted the growing friendship between his son and Miloo.
Perhaps thinking to distract him, he asked him one late summer day what
he would like for his next birthday. Ken opened his Michelangelo book to
the photograph of David. “I want to see that,” he said.
“Why that?” his father asked.
“It’s probably the most perfect thing I have ever seen. It has only one
flaw.”
“And what’s the flaw?”
“Look at his hand,” Ken pointed to the picture. “He’s holding a stone in
his hand and that’s the stone he was putting in a sling to throw at Goliath.
Everything else is perfect but this hand is weird. Why would he do that?
Why would he make such a strange hand on such a beautiful body?”
“I don’t know,” his father admitted. “So, that’s what you really want to
do?”
“Yes. I want to go to Florence.”
On the morning of his thirteenth birthday, he and his father boarded
the train to Italy. In Florence, they stepped into a line that seemed
to stretch to infinity outside the gates of the Accademia delle Belle Arti.
Slowly the line inched its way to the spot where the colossal 17-foot statue
towered over the crowd. Ken wanted to feast his eyes, but the relentless
throng forced him to walk by it after only a passing glance.
As they left the museum, his father asked, “Did you like it?”
“How can you look at something that way?” Ken asked. “I want to
spend a lot of time there.”
WAITING FOR MY SON
At the beginning of the season you must know
I am waiting for you
and I entrust you with an area
next to which
there will be an orchard of Jonathan apples.
For three days after your birth
it won’t rain
in order the grandparents
can give their great souls to their descendant…
I’ll leave you long distances
until you elope with your girlfriend
to a small island,
only the two of you to play around on a golden beach.
I will be far away
and the words I leave behind
you should abandon there among the pine trees in
the snow
23
The first genome of religious wonderment
is coded in the DNA of man
the magician gathers them around the fire
are you, not the one
with imagination, oh Leader?
It’s someone else, there, you see him?
With stories other than hunting
he enchants them
with stories that haven’t taken place yet
about men who aren’t born yet
about men who haven’t died yet
about animals that talk
hey, why are you waiting?
He tells them about a gleaming god.
Do you listen to him?
Start talking before he usurps you.
Harry, or else work with Him.
STROPHE
Moment, sent by a hand
that I had so much loved
you reached me almost at dusk
like a black dove.
The road shone before me
soft breath of sleep
at the end of a secret feast
moment, grain of sand,
that you alone kept
the tragic clepsydra whole
silent, as though it had seen Hydra
in the heavenly orchard.
Disguises
Among all the masks, he lost his face; he searched —
the red mask, the light blue, the black, the yellow; and that
purple with the golden evening star around the mouth and
eyes, and that one with the long, audacious beard; he used it
when he was ten years old, it suited him (and it proved true
almost to the point fifty years later); the other one, the white,
made of gypsum with the hollow eyes the cut-off nose as if
it represented his death; it relaxed him; he used it a lot; only
that dampness of the gypsum and the fine dust; he was afraid
they might get glued on his skin (oh, that, his real face) there
on the wall — where it is hanging; the sailor’s pipe got between
his teeth: he puts his sunglasses on— a deep glance, blind,
it stares into his eyes and encourages him to make a new choice:
the red again, the yellow, the light blue.
Manolis Aligizakis 