Solitude
Away from fishing grounds
skipper-less floating hope
in morning orange juice
windless calm of small
bay lights up with a red scarf
still dreaming of adventure
in high seas through
Desolation Sound to upper
coastal treasured pastures
another destitute day
arriving with paeans for
past glory, none talk about
today’s missed expedition
as if there is another on its way
HEDONISM
A fleshless string of beads made of songs
I haven’t given you today
with the spells and games of a charmer
I’ll cloy you, my love
naked and like a vine I’ll climb
to taste your body that devours me
with my fingers, I’ll conflagrate
the tender hairs of your mound
enrapturing wine and milk that soothes
to sleep I’ll bring to moisten you with
all my body drop by drop
and on your white sculptured legs
two vases that drive me crazy
my honey like a maniac, at last, I’ll ejaculate
THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA
I am still wondering what the slow-endeavouring patience means
And how, unwillingly, I came to grasp it,
and then dominate it, in all its power,
after having exhausted all the peaceful forms of revolt,
not because I should always have yielded without a word,
or that its fury and fire did not test my heart
that was always giving too many branches in its effort to understand,
but only my reconciled crying succeeds in having roots
into the hell inside my daily life,
into the hell outside me, from everywhere outside me,
it is only I, with my long patience,
involuntarily acquired, by the will of fate,
that fate that put the Library of Alexandria on fire
and made it in such a way that only the statue of Ptolemy II remained,
alone in the infernal traffic of the street,
drowned behind walls that are too high,
with huge letters from all the alphabets of the world.
Daily
When he gets up in the morning, and with a headache,
he doesn’t delay at all; he rushes, half dressed, to open
the window, to smell the cleaned dust of last night,
the aroma of the rotten grass, the rotten fruit behind
the fence wall. The street is still quiet. The flower sellers
pass with carnations or roses in their baskets. “Fake
convictions” he says, “it doesn’t matter” he adds. And
suddenly, the shadow of the city vanishes behind
the chimneys. All around, in the air, diaphanous, almost
triumphant, the buzz is heard from the keys of the stores,
the nails and hooks of the cheap daily business and
exchanges.
Turret
A smiling general stood on
top of a tank for commemorative
picture before the campaign started
such images unified
country and solidified
brave and timid under a flag
until the bishop arrived to
bless the troops and sanctify
the ammunition to make sure
they will all find targets and since
this attack was already blessed
and dignified by the officials
let the trumpet sound its
marching paean and let the
troops take charge of the details
Excerpt
Puzzled, Ken walked away and as he wound his way past the stalls he
noticed the silence that fell when he approached. No one smiled at him;
no one nodded or called out a cheerful “good morning.” People avoided
looking at him and stepped deliberately out of his way.
Ken left the market with an ache in his throat. The next day he went
back and still no one would talk to him. He went to the market for a
third day and was again chilled by the rejection he met. But that day as he
turned to go, he heard one woman say, “You’re the anti-Christ – go!”
At home he asked his father, “What is the anti-Christ?”
“That’s the devil,” he answered. “Why do you want to know?”
He explained the scene at the market and what the woman had said
to him.
“That’s very interesting,” Ken Sr. said, his lips drawing tight across his
teeth and turning the colour of ash.
Ken Sr. picked up the telephone. “Don’t leave the house,” he said. “I
want you to stay here.”
A short while later the same priest who had visited the house before
came to the door. “Something very interesting and potentially important
has just taken place,” Ken Sr. said. “The other day you called my son’s behaviour
anti-Christian. For the last three or four days he has gone to the
market where he likes to make drawings. People have shunned him and
he was called …” he turned to Ken. “Say the words.”
“The anti-Christ,” Ken said.
Ken Sr. leaned back in his chair. “There seems to be a link between
your words, ‘anti-Christian’ and their words, ‘the anti-Christ.’ Was that
their interpretation or was there someone, perhaps you, who actually said
those words? This is how they now feel and whether you realize it or not,
you have made me the second most important man in history – I’m the
father of the devil is what you’re telling me. I expect it’s you who started
this. If you ever refer to my son or any member of my family again, I will
truly make you wish you had never been born. Get out of my house and
don’t ever come near it again.”
The priest listened in stony silence and left, wrapping his black cassock
tightly around him.
SNOW AND THE EYES OF THE WOLVES
Don’t be afraid of winter and wolves
in this forest.
Winter is a transparent ivory egg,
and wolves are older dogs.
Don’t be afraid anyone!
We go together among the wolves,
through the winter
we have to, as all that
I promised you
is over there.
Sometimes avalanches can occur,
you’ve heard about it,
but do not let fear rule
over you,
if it happens, it will happen.
Give me your hand,
the hill is still far away
and high,
the trees are my friends,
we go by night, too
I talk to pines
as if talking to my father,
there is an old crucifix on the bank
if we pass by it –
done, and there we are.
Don’t be afraid of darkness, my dear
the snow and the eyes of the wolves
lead us.
Manolis Aligizakis 