Poet We left the poet’s house for last. When we entered the verses, lighter than thoughts, flew in mid air in a harmonious rhythm opposite our wild youth. We needed hide our flowing tears and we wanted to look elsewhere, this new world not to insult with our human littleness, as though we seek to avoid the responsibility of our age and there were lots of things we could still learn: the endurance of time opposite the old people’s stooping backs while the poet structured his verses with care and ended them with an polemic epode. Übermensch took the poet’s hand, as if after a long absence He had found His most familiar face. The poet still a beardless youth though obviously emotional before the Übermensch.
“It’s kinda like football. All you gotta do is get through dat gimlet.” I thought, it’s gauntlet, you ignorant shit. Then I started running. They tried to stop me, with their arms, their legs, with kicks and punches, but they didn’t tackle me or stand in my way. When I broke through and stood panting on the grass, I had a fat lip and I could feel some blood trickle down from my eyebrow. Buster nodded. “Okay. Now you gotta have a name.” “I already have a name.” “A gang name, pal. A gang name.” Buster thought about this for a minute, biting his lips like a schoolgirl, then he laughed. “I got it! Yer name is lucky cauze, like I said, dis is yer lucky day. You gotta knife?” “No.” “Dat’s all right, yuh kin use mine. Yuh hafta cut yer gang name in yer arm like dis,” he said, holding up his freckled forearm. Thin, crooked letters scarred the sunburned skin with what looked like BUSTER. I couldn’t believe how stupid it looked. “But first yuh gotta do one thing.” The gang spread out and formed a large circle with Buster and I at its centre. “Yuh gotta fight,” he said. “Yuh gotta fight ME.” He went into a crouch and poked a fist in my direction. I thought, if I had a gun, I’d shoot him. Suddenly the whole morning struck me as a badly drawn episode in a comic book. I shook my head, “No way.” Buster came out of his boxing stance. He looked puzzled. He came up and patted me on the cheek. Then he drove a sharp left into my stomach. There was barely time to tense my abs and the shock of it drove me back a step. I crossed my arms over the pain and took a deep breath. “Come on dere, Lucky, you gotta. It’s the ‘nitiation.” He sounded sweetly reasonable, as if all the world agreed, this is the way things are done. “An hey, if ya win, you kin be leader.” “I don’t want to be leader, Buster. I don’t even want to join your gang.” “Too late, pal. An I’m gonna keep hittin ya till ya tryan hit me back.” He laughed a mean little laugh and backed down into a crouch. The ring of gang members moved in a little closer, their bodies tense,
…shrinking, yet unable to vanish completely. I don’t know what I have to say or what I have to do. Sometimes this obstacle appears to me as though a tear drop flopped on a music composition that will keep it silent until it dissolves. And I have the unbearable feeling that all the rest of my life won’t be sufficient to dissolve this tear drop in my soul. And a thought haunts me that if I were to be burned alive this obstinate moment would be the last to surrender. Who would help us? Once, when I was still a seaman, one July noon, I found myself alone on an island, crippled in the sun. A soothing breeze brought to my mind tender thoughts, it was then when a young woman with a diaphanous dress revealing her body lines slender and willing like a gazelle’s and a somber man who stared in her eyes from a yard away, came and sat not far from where I was. They spoke a language I couldn’t understand. She called him Jim. But their words had no weight and their glances, mingled and motionless, left their eyes blind. I always think of them, because they were the only people I saw that didn’t have the grasping or haunted look that I noticed on everybody else. That look that makes them resemble either a pack of wolves or a flock of sheep. I met them again the same day in one of those island chapels that one finds as he goes by and loses them as he walks out. They still kept the same distance from each other, then they came together and kissed. The woman turned into a cloudy image that disappeared as she was of small stature. I asked myself whether they knew that they escaped from the world’s nets… It is time for me to go. I know of a pine tree that leans near the sea. At noon, it bestows a shade upon a tired body and at night, as the wind passes through its needles it starts a strange song, like souls that have abolished death at the moment when they start becoming lips and skin. Once I spent a night under such a tree. At dawn I was as fresh as if they’d just cut me off the quarry. Ah, if one could live like this, irrelevant.
…despite the heavy atmosphere and, as everything changes, here is the fog the ship enters the fog area impossible to see ahead of us curtains of fog in layers and the first raindrops start falling and a sudden, wild wind starts to ruin the sails the boats the masts it destroys everything on the ship it groans around us like a beast and the wooden ship rocks how far the images of our homeland — under us, the abyss opens and darkness thickens in the horizon as if it was possible it thickens darkness falls dawn comes curtains of rain replace the partitions of fog the bright sun is hidden and only the cursed wind ravages the palm trees in the faraway islands our ship delays it delays a lot when are we to arrive to the foreign land? The Atlantic, I repeat surrounds us it’s a huge ocean we are timid it is fearsome…
Lesson The sound of a shell in the mouth of the beautiful woman prepares us for the ultimate lesson and teaches us how to die with dignity when her naked body remains unnoticed though it stands erect, provocative, tempestuous before our eyes so we can learn how to depart with our heads up during that first snowfall covering our footsteps at dawn, in the secluded room, and the lone chirp of a hungry bird tells us one day we won’t ever be hungry memory runs to the light sleep under the grapevine, middle of July when cicadas continued their perpetual revolution of species unaccustomed to obeying rules or laws when we sleep in peace dreaming of Helena’s naked body under the light bed sheet during that first autumnal rain and the fresh smell of earth, soil desperately seeking understanding when we must learn how to die with dignity and this, our ultimate lesson in humanness
All My Belongins All my belongings have remained as if I died long ago dust to dust the place is full and I inscribe crosses with my fingers all my things recall the hour we spent together when my books lost themselves the clock has stopped at that hour the happy hour, enchanting was the sundown I’ve been dead so long the window has always been closed. No persons nor the sun ever enter my deserted house echoes that hour again, the only hour that lasts from morning to the eve and I don’t know what this place is nor who inscribes the crosses and all my things remained the same as if I died long ago
“Quite right, my dear, and if you don’t mind me saying so, I wish you would take that responsibility a little more seriously and keep the things we hear in confidence to yourself.” Robert Carson folded his hands, placed them on the desk in front of him, and smiled at Emily as if to atone for the harshness of his words. “Having said that,” he continued in a gentler tone, “I will tell you what Ben wanted. You would have to know in a day or so, anyway. Ben’s getting married on Friday.” Emily’s mouth dropped open. She had been about to take offence at his inference that she was a gossip, but his last words erased every other thought from her mind. And she certainly paid no heed to his advice because, within five minutes, she was on the phone to Molly Andrews, her best friend in Nimkus. As in most small communities, a class system existed amongst the residents of Nimkus. The town matrons would have denied it but the divisions, although very subtle, did exist. There was no doctor in town, no dentist and no lawyer. For services supplied by these professionals one had to travel to the neighbouring larger town of Bradshaw. With the absence of such elite families as these, the responsibility of maintaining the position of upper crust fell to the wives of the banker, the minister, the station agent, the town clerk, the druggist … and on it went. Had the principal of the three room school on the outskirts of town been a man, his wife would certainly have been included in this group. But the principal of Nimkus School happened to be, and had been for some time, a single woman. Although well regarded by the parents of the children she taught, Miss Donna Carrington had no status in town because she had no husband. And a single woman, no matter how brilliant and ambitious, was secretly regarded as a nonentity by the town matrons. Immediately following Ben Fielding’s visit to the vicar, Mrs. Carson telephoned Mrs. Andrews. The station agent’s wife then called Jean McKinnon, the banker’s wife. Mrs. McKinnon just happened to be on her way to do her grocery shopping. And, of course, she let slip the astounding news she had just heard as soon as she began to give her grocery order to Mr. Stratton, the owner of Stratton’s…
SPRING It’s here, it has come. Women, gather round, let’s march to meet it, let’s march to welcome it. Here comes sweet spring adorned in flowers, riding a donkey, sitting like a man with herds of braying donkeys close behind it, ready all to copulate ready to be lovers all. They kick with all four legs and bellow in their joy, so wildly alive that you can see the madness in their eyes and braying all along they bellow out spring’s beauty and carry it abroad for all the world to see and spring, as it proceeds and blazons its warm breath, fills up the entrance way of every house with heat. The newly married maiden feels hot in the cool air and dresses in her lightest cotton dress and walks out to refresh herself for all to see her passion and the wind, if it can, to cool her ardor. Ah, spring, sweet spring, companion of the young, youth’s oestrus, comrade equally to boys and girls if you run out to the fields even if you took away your steps a myriad of followers you will always find beside you while all the long-lived men who can no longer walk the fields to meet you, stay behind and envying, blame the young. Ah spring, let us give to others their fair share without losing our good hold on the reins of your donkey. Look how the young girls play and push each other. Look how they fall and show their secret lines to men. Ah spring, stay steady on the saddle and hold more tightly to your donkey’s reins. Oh spring, oh my sweet spring, companion of the young youth’s oestrus, comrade equally to boys and girls.
Some adventure this is.” Atall turned to slash furiously at the bush he’d been trimming. Ari was gone. Atall called after him, “You should be helping us cut grass. Hjálmar’s sailing first thing in the morning.” Keallach and Ailan watched Ari drop down beside them. He put his finger to his lips for silence then untied their bonds. They followed him up and over the side into shallow water. Neither thought to ask why or where. Ari’s friendship with their Brother Lorcan was all they needed to know. It was not until they reached a clearing in the woods that they noticed his blood splattered tunic. When Ari told them that the Little Warrior had been avenged and could rest in peace, they were glad. Both Brothers at the same time said, “God forgive us.” “Now we must find your Brothers.” Ari told them. “But we must be careful. Searchers are out looking for Hrafen, Atall and Bjorn. Soon they will also be looking for four escaped thralls and for me.” The Brothers were ready to go but Ari cautioned them to remain in hiding. “If I run into searchers, I will just be one of them. When I find your Brothers, I will either bring them here or come back for you. Now, please lie low until I return.” With that, Ari slipped into the night. All was quiet except for the hooting of an owl and the scurry of tiny paws on the forest floor.
Zeta I paired my sigh with the stirring of my heart, the pleasure of the first penetration with the apex of an orgasm and the rain’s slow slap onto the earth’s voluptuousness I paired my lust with undulation of her body with its erotic rapture and the longing for consummation I paired the horse with its rider and death with the flower of life and I said, together they constitute the meaning of transcendence I paired the beggar’s plea with the concern of the passerby and I said, together they fight the common enemy called hunger, the endless source of need for equilibrium the unhealed wound or the bleeding scar of the twentieth century as always and
I said, together they define the meaningful schemata of the swallow’s flight path that slices the wind caressing it with a winged shadow together they formulate the essence of the unexpected soft pain and sweetness together they constitute the final, greatest monad
Manolis Aligizakis 