Kore Upright, erect, vertical like a thunderbolt the Kore was blowing the conch thundering echoes, a statue declaring victory, ethereal, insubordinate, eternal symbol of beauty, revolutionary volunteer against the banality of every societal model expected behavior, barrenness, she stood to the heights of transcendental, just in her twenties with her fiery red lips she shone like a moist pebble creaking under the shoe of the passersby, image of exquisite natural beauty, recalled by the old woman on her empty bed, a woman who was chased by all handsome youths, back then, when she was beautiful Kore and now, a wrinkled spinster with no heirs, she feels a tear rolling down her cheek, now that she has nothing to look for but the bitter truth, the merciless triumph of the unerring Hades
Cursed country from the heights to the depths, you sinful land! None will ever lean to give you the last kiss of death. And your fall will reverberate your mourning will be heard before it will be smothered by the whole crying universe. A new world will appear as if from your ashes, denier of all your power and glory the world will talk badly of you. A World different than yours one you have nourished with your milk will pass over your lands and a spring will flow out of each step it’ll take. And your Soul, oh Polis, damned sinful as it is and dead will leave you and shall wander searching for a new generation as if sold out to demons it will cry and wander in the darkness like a shadow in the void, like a craft in the wild abyss…
off a stool lightly for one of her advanced years, and beckoned them. She opened the cage door, then the elevator door, and ushered them in. She waited patiently while Jen, Lona and Maria assembled their baggage. Three persons plus operator appeared to be the elevator’s capacity. Then she closed the doors carefully and pulled a brass lever. Grunting with effort, the box lifted. “Three into seventeen,” Maria calculated as the box jerked upward. “How many trips will this thing make, do you suppose, before we’re all upstairs?” Ordinarily, I would find this hotel an intriguing anecdote, thought Jennifer, something to tell the folks back home. Right now, I just find it all an intolerable delay. She was becoming quite adept at all the procedures. As she exited at the fifth floor, she went immediately to the dezhurnaya’s desk and rapped smartly on the table. The clerk, another septagenarian, was nodding off in an easy chair. “Key to room 503,” she said briskly in Russian, and proffered her card. This woman could be someone’s grandmother, she thought, and though it’s difficult to view her as the enemy, a nosy floor clerk who noticed that Volodya was Soviet, not Canadian, would be a nuisance or even fatal. Jennifer opened the door to her room. It was dark and close but not what she would have picked for a briefing session. There was a private bathroom, she discovered with relief, and opened the door thankfully. It held a square, chipped, pedestal basin, a small bath, and gigantic toilet that sat lordly on a dais. Its tank was secured onto the wall above the bowl and there was a chain to pull that worked the flush. Either the last guest had pulled too enthusiastically or the fixture’s age had rendered it incontinent. It had overflowed onto the floor. “I’d better start working on getting this cleaned up right away,” she muttered. “I don’t want staff in the room while Volodya’s here—that is, if I could even get staff to clean it up.” Once again she was talking to herself—problems, delays. And underneath it all—fear. Consequently, it was nearly six o’clock by the time Jennifer finally left the hotel, walked briskly along the riverbank, and turned onto the same bridge they had driven across on her way to Red Square. Possibly there was another telegraph office than the one she had already discovered near the east wing of the Hotel Rossiya, but it would save time to head directly toward the familiar one. As she walked, she thought how to word the telegram: “Returned to Moscow. Hotel Bucharest.” That part was easy. Then what? “Jazz with Ella” and maybe she’d better add…
Group Tour Give the little bugger something, Harold said. He won’t leave us alone ’til you do. They had just exited the market across from the hotel. Both wanted to stretch their legs before dinner, which according to the itinerary was to be served aboard a boat cruise to a pagoda of apparent significance. The frenzied pace of the market left Winnie feeling dizzy. Unfamiliar scents always caused her to gag. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the afternoon glare when the boy touched her on the shoulder. He thrust forward an unwashed palm. – Haroo, ’Merican, he said. Straw adhered to his unruly thatch like dust to a mop. – Ca-na-di-an! she corrected, hoping louder would somehow improve the youth’s linguistic skills. It hadn’t worked anywhere else. – How much should I give him? she asked, but her husband had wandered ahead. The boy tugged at her sleeve. – Hold your horses, sonny, she said. Coins pooled at the bottom of the handbag she’d purchased in whatever country they were visiting the previous Tuesday. All she could recall was that it had been Day 10, halfway through their holiday. And that Harold had kept her awake most of the night with gastrointestinal difficulties. Their tour leader Karen told them not to worry if they forgot how to convert the currency. Monopoly money, she’d called it. Winnie handed the boy a coin bearing the profile of an erstwhile emperor. The youngster appeared disappointed, so she poured the works into his excited hands. All the countries mixed in together…
To Stay It must have been one in the morning, or one thirty. In one corner of the tavern, behind the wooden partition. Except for us two, the place was empty. Barely lit by a kerosene lamp. A sleep-deprived waiter was dozing by the door. No one would see us. And we had excited ourselves so much, we were unwilling to be cautious. Our clothes were half open, and there were not many, since that divine July was very hot. Enjoyment of the flesh between half-open clothes, a quick glimpse of the memory which has lasted twenty-six years, and has now come to stay in this poetry.
However, the lift operator isn’t surprised; he had seen the same cloud, though a little darker and deep red in colour, in the mirror of the elevator, when tiredness and sleep overtake him, pressing the floor buttons, taking familiar faces of the high-rise offices or their clients, con-artists, crafty, imaginative or simple-minded villagers, lawyers with briefcases, tailors, book sellers, cigarette sellers, unfortunate people who have slowly lost their last virtue of loneliness, their last dignity of silence, ready to kneel, to beg, to lie, to flatter, for a little more bread, for half a cigarette, for a quarter of a kiss, for a thousandth of glory — always unready for the whole of Eros, for the whole death, for the whole sacrifice and glory. And the café man is always there with his tray full of empty or full cups and glasses always minding his tray, not seeing the faces and the lift operator observing nothing, though seen everything responsible for the ascent or descent responsible for every stop responsible for the floor numbers even the office numbers along the hallways where the internal telephones are located…
important areas of support for the regime, along with the rest of the surrounding region called “The Sunni Triangle”. Many inhabitants were Sunni and were employees and supporters of Saddam’s government. During the same era, Falluza became an industrial center with many large factories. About half the houses were destroyed in the war, and most of them have still not been rebuilt. Indeed, this city still looks like a war zone. A lot of the houses are only half-standing. Others are leaning against one another as if supporting one other, yet people sit around in the coffee bars drinking their special tea or coffee, and one can see they take life in stride. It seems they know this is the way things work out when you stand up and try to claim who you are, against people who think they know who you are and insist on telling you so. So, the inhabitants of this forsaken place sit stoically, with a perseverance that defies even the strongest of wills, knowing deep in their hearts that what goes around comes around. They know deep in their hearts that what you throw out there in the balance of the cosmos comes back and hits you on the head at another time or place without exceptions. People sit with all the anguish of the world on their shoulders, a world that has gone wrong, a world that defies their right to be alive, to be with their flesh and blood, with their wants and dreams and expectations of life. They sit and don’t care that their homes have been destroyed, since they know they will rebuild sooner or later. They will deploy all their efforts again to rebuild what human madness has destroyed. Rassan goes around and asks for Talal’s family and is told they need to go a few blocks down the road and turn to the right to find Talal’s grandparents.’ house. Two minutes later they are outside what they expect is the house. Rassan gets out and yells from the top of the yard door to the inside of the yard; a young man about fifteen comes to see who is calling. Talal gets out of the car and sees his younger brother, Abdul Aziz, coming through the gate to the road. “Abdul, my little brother,” Talal approaches him with open arms. Abdul looks at him and realizes this man is his brother. “Talal, what a surprise this is!” he says, and his eyes fill with tears. Talal is crying as well and among the sobs asks, “Where’s everybody? Where are Aesha and our grandfather?” “Grandfather is at the coffee bar for a while; our grandmother died four months ago. Aesha is here; come in, come inside.” He urges all of them to come in and leads the way. Emily and Talal walk together through the gate and Rassan follows; they find Aesha working in the kitchen. She is so surprised to see Talal after being away for seven years that she hugs and kisses him, throws herself in his arms sobbing with joy. Talal introduces Emily.
‘Right, Joe. And even with the tractors and the rest, Michael and Danny Boylan are still finding it difficult to cope. They’re working long, hard hours every day.’ ‘They could bring in a couple of land girls,’ Joe suggested teasingly. ‘They’re not that desperate,’ Caitlin retorted. ‘A lot of farmers don’t want city girls in the fields. I don’t know of any around these parts.’ Then Caitlin leaned forward in her chair with a serious look on her face. ‘Joe, I’m glad you’re here and Michael isn’t. I want to talk to you about something important.’ ‘What would that be?’ ‘Nora. She’s not happy, is she?’ Joe felt uneasy. ‘Oh she seems content enough.’ ‘Joe, you’re not being honest with me,’ Caitlin interrupted. ‘You and I both know she should never have married Liam Dooley. Oh he’s been a good husband. I’m not complaining on that score. He worships her. He’ll do anything for her. Maybe he does be out a lot, but he’s a teacher and he’s involved in a lot of out-of-school activities. Local history societies, the WEA, and all that. But he’s not the man for Nora. He’s twenty-two years older than she is. He’s set in his ways, and they’re not Nora’s ways. He’s stuffy and fussy and a creature of habit. Nora needs someone who’ll … who’ll open doors and windows and let her fly. If you see what I mean.’ ‘I do, Mrs Carrick.’ Caitlin got up to pour tea into two cups on the kitchen table and added milk and sugar. ‘I’ll be glad when the war’s over and rationing ends,’ she said. ‘Will you have a scone, Joe? Or a slice of treacle bread and butter? Home-made country butter.’ ‘No thanks, Mrs Carrick.’ Joe accepted the proffered cup of tea. ‘Joe, why did Nora marry Liam Dooley?’ Caitlin asked unexpectedly. Joe was taken by surprise. ‘I suppose she discovered that she loved him. They were working together at …’ ‘Blethers, Joe. I want an honest answer. And I know she would have told you. You above all people.’ Joe, put on the spot, tried drinking tea to cover his discomfiture. ‘Haven’t you asked Nora herself? You’re her mother.’ ‘But not a good mother,’ Caitlin declared with commendable honesty. ‘She’d be more likely to confide in Michael than in me, but she hasn’t. Not in this case. Nora and I have never been all that close. Not as close as a mother and an only daughter ought to be. We get on badly, she and I.
What Can I Say to You What can I say to you, oh autumn, when you rise from the lights of the city up to the clouds? Hymns, symbols, poetry all familiar frosty flowers of the mind flow onto your hair. A giant, you appear like an emperor’s spectrum on the road of bitterness and recollection; with your golden greatcoat’s fringe you scatter leaves and faces of stars upon the soil you, the angel of decay, master of death the shadow which in a few imaginary steps occasionally you slowly flap your wings to write question-marks on the horizon. I yearn, oh shivering autumn, for the hours for this forest’s trees, the lonely bust and as the branches fall onto the soil at autumn I’ve come to let myself into your holy ardor
Manolis Aligizakis 