Lento
Fast news floating on the glass wall –
perhaps theirs.
An endless story commands
for all, but the consolation
could move seas within us.
Hawking became weightless for a moment,
I saw the angelic glow around his body.
Anyway, the secrets of escape artists
I’ve been researching nowadays and I’m
terrified that the infidel class
will one day suck me in.
I’m a swaying burden above my
shadow, but I know that
an eternal smile dwells in the hologram house.
Branches
Broken branches
entwined like the dreams
you once had
free in the wind’s temper
and you managed to tie
an anchor on your ankle
and you hung from a tree branch
as if by a thread over the void
waiting for a solution
strange stagnation that governed
your thoughts like death
before death and
you said,
in the next life, I’ll become a pilot
to hide high up in the clouds
The Last Lost Mite
With fresh palm, just out of the seawater.
The gold coin slowly fell into the water, and we followed it
as it settled on the bottom, eyeing us behind the seaweed.
You dipped your hand in the water, he said. You threw in
this coin, which we’ve held for years and years, is like a ticket
to the kingdom of the shadows.
Which wet palm? Which freshness? Which lost seriousness?
This bitter gesture wasn’t a matter of choice, no, no.
Logogriph
Longing descends
like a spirited mortal
at low tide
ascends a languorous
watery apex
at high pulse
chthonic impulse of
movement pushes
the earth’s bottom
to the surface
lethargic ache full
of ideas tsunami
to gulp a mortal or two
and their belongings
resurrection
renewal
rebirth of tidal love
Behind the Scenes
words that nobody utters: he is an orphan
like any coloured vapour he dissipates
into the tilted sky or lose himself in the world
letter on a rattling goods train:
smooth graze in man’s history
lost vestige: is it truth or ample
extension of imagination?
crumbled face among worn-out decorations
stranger: itching, with the litheness of death
he searches for his own life
and if he doesn’t find it
as an orphan with parents alive
he dresses himself with somebody else’s
eternal is only the place in which we cannot hide
everything that can be lived: is death
did the clock needle stop? or is the world spinning with it?
FAR AWAY
I would like to tell you a memory…
But it seems nearly erased…and as though nothing remains—
because it lies far away in my youthful years.
Skin like it was made of jasmine…
That day in August—was it August?—the night…
I barely remember the eyes; they were, I think, blue…
Ah yes, blue; a sapphire blue.
Manolis Aligizakis 