Voice in the Night
“Water, water” the deep voice was heard over the ships
during the night. No answer was heard. A sailor stood next
to the mast. A star hanged off the rope ladder. A little
later a rivulet was heard trickling down towards the sea
a rivulet just held by two fingers. Another voice at the quay
“water, water” then quietness again. The big crab, on
the big rock remained motionless listening to the voices.
Visitor
Old Chevy squealed frustration
over the rough asphalt
just outside the little town he reached
at dusk.
They noticed his laughter
in the beer parlour
and at the convenience store
where he bought a pack of smokes.
Molly felt overwhelmed
when she looked deep in his eyes
and by chance touched his hand.
None ever called his name.
Who was the unknown soldier
who fought by our side
in the battle for the spring song?
Futility recommenced human history.
Unaccomplished travesty
when the next day on his way out of town
a door slammed behind him
and when they found him fallen
in the middle of the street
they knew he talked to our glorious ancestors
just one stratum below the reality of his dream.
The following Sunday
Molly went to church
dressed in her red dress
and on her golden hair,
the white scarf.
The White Horse
Further from the grapevines was the yellow field
there, under the eucalyptus, an all-white horse,
in its sealed snow whiteness, was gazing faraway
at something white, needed, invisible. The shadow
of the horse seemed light-blue on the sunburn grass,
so much so, that the voices of the harvesters took
a light-blue hue with golden stigmata.
Next year, in the summer, in the same spot, as
they dug to create a water well they discovered
three same statues all white like that horse which
vanished one night.
Poem by Kostas Karyotakis
AS I DIE
In the relaxed time of the vernal twilight, my wounded soul,
what futile effort as you’ll fold your wings
when redemption you’ll long for something
poor soul, forever sad and desperate
when you reach the end of your line you’ll find
hatred and love, passions and vile always vanish
when the disappointment, like myrrh rises
from the exquisite flowers of life, my dreamy soul
that special moment when with a simple smile
you’ll remember enemies and friends
futile soul what will you say to the sea and to the wind,
my closed heart, when you stand opposite the pale dusk?
TRANSLATING THE END OF LIFE TO EROS
Since I can’t touch you
with my tongue
I transliterate my passion.
I can’t take you as communion
and I denature you
I can’t undress you
and I dress you with imagination
of an allophone language.
I can’t cuddle under your wings
and I fly around you turning
the pages of your vocabulary.
I want to know how you denude
yourself, how you are reborn
and for this I search for
your habits between your lines
the fruits you love
the smells you prefer
the girls you read as if turning pages.
I’ll never see your nude signs
so I work hard on your adjectives
that I recite them in an allophone language.
Yet my story became too old
my tome doesn’t adorn any shelf
and now I imagine you leather-bound
in a foreigner’s bookcase.
Since it was never allowed
to let myself in the nonsense of nostalgia
and write this poem, I read
the gray sky in a sunlit translation.
Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Now
pieces of the great incomparable dream we
once held
are taken away from us
warm parts of lost glories
wedged in our nails, go rotten, our hands swell,
hurt; they steal them from us while we sleep,
to the arms…
and we sang all together, hoped all together
and fell all together
the squares were full of gestures and visions
as we kneeled over our dead, you could say,
a piece of the earth was sinking, the coffins
floated in the air raised up by the sudden
wind of our songs;
to the arms…
And the defeated soldiers walked along
the indifferent roads, children put their tongues out
while the soldiers laughed for a moment
a vague distant laughter, as if they see for
the first time how beautiful life is.
Or sometimes, burdensome, they lift a stone
and throw it far away
in the space to the direction that perhaps Fate
passes. And they keep on walking in the spring
warmish light taking off their boots, their bags,
their clothes and staying naked,
full of lice, silence and lunacy of continuance
inside them.
The defeated soldiers, the defeated soldiers
have the sorrow of immenseness.
THE BRIDGE
Indeed, the halves of the hour are strange; especially for
those who are asleep
and have lost count of time; and more so for those who
are awake and count. The half hours maintain that
vague half that seeks its supplement and are conscious
of being half; and they’re conscious of the vague
other half, in the previous or the after, always in
the beyond and the outside;
strange, indeed are the half hours — they’re a suspended
perhaps loud 1 ½, 2 ½, 3 1/2 . Perhaps, and a perhaps
that sounds like a slash in the wholeness of time,
a sensitive, metallic pulse; a vibration like the thin blade
of a stiletto thrust in the middle of a bull’s forehead
like that sharp knife which whizzing through the dark
void is nailed in a closed door.
Manolis Aligizakis 