Η Ελένη/Helen

Δεν κοίταξα άλλο· ούτε άκουγα σχεδόν τις πολεμόχαρες κραυγές τους —
εγώ, ψηλά, στα τείχη, πάνω απ’ τα κεφάλια των θνητών, αέρινη, σάρκινη,
χωρίς ν’ ανήκω σε κανένα, χωρίς να ’χω κανενός την ανάγκη,
σα να ’μουν (ανεξάρτητη εγώ) ολόκληρος ο έρωτας, — ελεύθερη
από το φόβο του θανάτου και του χρόνου, μ’ ένα άσπρο λουλούδι στα μαλλιά μου,
μ’ ένα λουλούδι ανάμεσα στα στήθη μου, κι ένα άλλο στα χείλη να μου κρύβει
το χαμόγελο της ελευθερίας.
Μπορούσαν
κι από τις δυο πλευρές να με τοξεύσουν.
Έδινα στόχο
βαδίζοντας αργά πάνω στα τείχη, σχεδιασμένη ακέρια
στον χρυσοπόρφυρο ουρανό της εσπέρας.
Κρατούσα τα μάτια κλεισμένα
για να ευκολύνω μια εχθρική χειρονομία τους — γνωρίζοντας στο βάθος
ότι κανείς δεν θα τολμούσε. Τα χέρια τους τρέμαν απ’ το θάμβος
της ομορφιάς και της αθανασίας μου —
(ίσως τώρα μπορώ να προσθέσω:
δεν τον φοβόμουν το θάνατο, γιατί τον ένιωθα πολύ μακριά μου).

I didn’t watch anymore I hardly even heard their

             war-thirsty cries –

high up on the walls I was above the heads of mortals airy

             made of flesh

belonging to no one without need of anyone

as if I was independent absolute love – free

from fear of death and time with a white flower

             in my hair

with a flower between my breasts and another in my lips

              hiding for me

the smile of freedom

             They could

have shot at me from both sides with their arrows

              I presented

an easy target walking slowly on the walls completely intact

              in the golden purple evening sky

              I kept my eyes closed

to make every hostile gesture from them easy – knowing

              deep inside

that none of them would dare Their hands trembled with awe

              at my beauty and immortality –

(maybe I can add now that

I didn’t fear death because I felt him so far away)

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THE INITIATE

The initiate dressed in white will always dwells in caves

and the oleanders will redden behind him

the pebbles sprinkled by the holy rain

the whole gorge that follows.

I also go near with my serpent-self

the estuary of passion.    

My soles — the last lovers —

carry me lightly

as if I had no heaviness in my consciousness.

The one who attracts me stops, thin,

dressed in white and having a ponytail;

he smells a strong odor like devil rosemary

while he exhumes the beautiful fragrance of a dead angel.

The leafage of the carob-tree

hides something quivering and invisible

felt only by that quivering and invisible sense

that we have inside us. 

The initiate is very thin;

His pants only balloon a little

in the front and a little in the back

as flesh air fills his shirt.

The sponsor of earth lowered me

with the unanswered questions in my tongue

to a cave that instead of a mouth

had a hole in the sky.

Under it stood

the provider of the inconceivable

with his palms turned upwards

he milked the light-blue.

He stirred a little;

was perhaps the unforeseen from above

that pushed him

or the earth, slave of precision

that shook him from his foundations?

He smiled with eyes, with teeth of metal

then I thought I had skipped

something very important before

time and day had given birth to me.

Thus I firstly asked about time

which passes by quickly these days

with wings that only have time

to caress me, the wilted one.   

When you’re young — the translator

of the timeless explained to me —

you’re by nature satiated

as if you gorged yourself

in an extra rich meal.

Full of endless future

one hour seems as the whole feast

seasons have no end

eons separate fruits from snow

stodgy seconds sit heavy over the weeks.

The newly found body

isn’t about to get hungry

— truly how did they store so many

moments under the fresh skin? —

the newly recruited body

won’t get hungry anymore.

Only later, when the storage facility  

starts to empty of life

and fills with insecurity

what is five years, you might say,

I didn’t even get their smell

while all along with more bulimia

you swallow the half-chewed mouth-fulls

from the leftovers of your time-portion.

We walked out of the cave

and we felt as reborn

as if made of stones and soil.

Half as a blessing half as a punishment

he wrapped my aged body with aroma.

Then I understood what I had skipped:

it doesn’t relate to my birth

but to a death I hadn’t mourned yet

a death that I hadn’t died yet. 

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WAITING

Like drought, for rain;

Like a famished one, for a morsel of food;

Like one drowning, for a rescuer;

Like one dying, for rebirth . . .

I am waiting for you.

H. S. Shiva Prakash, India

From: “Like Earth to Stars”,
(Poems 2008–2014)

ΠΕΡΙΜΕΝΟΝΤΑΣ

Σαν η ξηρασία τη βροχή

ο πεινασμένος μια μπουκιά ψωμί

ο πνιγμένος το σωτήρα του

ο πεθαμένος την αναγέννηση του

σε περιμένω

Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη//Translated by Manolis Aligizakis

A Dog in the Night

During a strange, orange and rosy dusk, it stopped in front

of the locked house; a joyous group of people got off

a car in front of the fence-wall.

The eyes of the blonde young man looked like the eyes

of his Lord.

                   It stopped.

The young men looked at it.

                                           It wagged its tail. It stopped.

The young girls pet it.

                                       It guessed. It stopped.

They tied its tails on a bucket. It stopped.

Then it run away hearing behind it the sound of the bucket

              dragging on the cobblestones

not at all an angry dog, not sad

with that happiness of punishment for its first betrayal.

That clangour, in all its truthfulness, would inform its master

and perhaps it would find him one day. It was its choice.

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Affirmation

I dive deep where only light reigns

roots of my ancestors and

the pieta of cyclamens I meet

in search for a beacon;

the beacon, when on the love for all

enameled images I stumble.

Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, Κρης, εποίει*

A man, how did he see man?

A man, a giant, how did he see man?

Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, Κρης, εποίει*

A humble affirmation

of lineage, parents, siblings,

of where a person comes from,

of where such a soul originates.

Reminder of where a woman’s womb

nurtured another splendorous sun

another man

where a woman’s womb graced life

with the spirit of the Eternal.

Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος, Κρης, εποίει*

*Created by the Cretan Dominikos Theotokopoulos

My quest I underscore for the one

I crave to uphold, once again.

A simple pronouncement of

where a man comes from until

the latter moons when all universe

prides to call Him her son

latter sunlit days when the roots

reflect on the membrane of man’s

thought and the lining of man’s

greed claims the remains as

a moonless night encodes

where this man comes from.

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Life Identified With Poetry

Tasos Livaditis was and remains one of the greatest poets of the last century. Poetry was his life. He lived all his life with love, with the dream of the revolution and with the nightmare of its oblivion. He lived the drama of persecution, the pain only a few others experienced and with the agony of his deep dive into himself. He lived the joy of relationships with the family and friends and the tyrannizing wish to escape all human ties. He lived talking to the everyday people of his neighbourhood or the ones he met in the crossroads of the world and he talked to the dead to whom he always had something to say even sometimes late. He enjoyed pleasures and happy moments and he also punished himself for real or imaginary guilt. And all this fed his poetry.

       The man, the poet, the fighter Tasos Livaditis whose vision once seemed shuttered wasn’t shuttered at all; it only revealed itself in a different way as the years went by. Although his vision of a socialist world that he gave all he could fell within itself for Livaditis it remained alive in his disappointment which was counterbalanced by his human compassion. For this his last books, that at first glance seem full of disillusionment at the shuttering of his hopes, in reality they are books of deeper human reattachment arising from the deep emotional connection people feel when they meet, when they feel that they are joined by something inexplicable that in fact helps them remain human forever.

            And, Oh, memories, that retain something more

            than what we’ve lived…

~Titos Patrikios

Transformations

I coaxed her – he says the black bear I tamed her

first I threw my bread at her then my head

Now I am the bear and I am the mirror

I sit on the chair I take care of my nails

I paint them red or yellow I see them I like them

I cannot touch anything I’m afraid of death

I turn the chain of my neck into a crown and

I place it on my forehead Now what could I do?

I must keep my head high and always

gaze upward However at midnight

in my new sleeplessness in whichever way I walk

I hear my footsteps echoing down through the trapdoor

where the other chains hang from the walls

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