Shadows

Shadows procession down

the mountainside bearing

rosemary holy water 

from springs

you spread on the clothesline

white linen morphing

chthonic goddesses on green

carpet, morning breeze

dancing them to flute song

beginning of Eucharist

the priest sprinkles holiness

to pious peasants while

they worry for their wheat and grapes

in the rainless days of June

https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/y26q9n?page=1&pageSize=10

POEM BY KOSTAS KARYOTAKIS

PRECURSOR

You took your eyes and walked away

no one remembers where you’ve gone

and you wonder where your last tear

may fall and who will accept it

ah, the weight of such struggle overpowers you

and you seek support stretching your arm

you stop awhile whirling around, you hide your face

in your hands, then you restart. 

How you can carry on, oh sister soul, seeking forgiveness

giving back love for each of your wounds?

And how you can carry on since all your paths

have been shut over the earth?

Look, the self-deception of the world dances around you

lips lock and offerings are raised up high and laugh

you die and from the start, as if you’ve gone already —

everyone forgets of you.

I salute you! You’ve experienced life only in your dreams

for this you deserve a suitable end, beautiful soul

your apotheosis has arrived and it becomes

your first and last joy. 

https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/vznd2p?page=1&pageSize=10

UNCERTAIN

Where the land ends, the sky begins — he said;

where the sky starts sorrow vanishes.

He was alone, not sad

since he could see the clouds

since the clouds were rosy

since he found them to be pretty.

Suddenly, between the fingers of the night,

a star looked at him in the eyes. It didn’t believe him.

https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/rpdkk8?page=1&pageSize=10

YANNIS RITSOS-POEMS, Selected Books

Η Ελένη/Helen

Θυμάμαι ακόμα, παιδί, στις όχθες του Ευρώτα, πλάι στις ζεστές πικροδάφνες,
τον ήχο από ’να δέντρο που ξεφλουδιζόταν μόνο του· οι φλούδες
πέφτανε μαλακά μες στο νερό, πλέαν σαν τριήρεις, ξεμακραίναν,
κι εγώ περίμενα, σώνει και καλά, μια μαύρη πεταλούδα με πορτοκαλιές ραβδώσεις
να κάτσει σε μια φλούδα, απορημένη που, ενώ μένει ακίνητη, κινείται,
κι αυτό με διασκέδαζε που οι πεταλούδες, αν και έμπειρες του αέρα,
δεν έχουν ιδέα από ταξίδια στο νερό κι από κωπηλασίες. Και ήρθε.

I still remember as a young girl on the banks of Eurotas

next to the sun-warmed oleanders

the sound of a tree peeling its bark by itself The peelings

fell softly in the water floating away like triremes

and I waited one way or another for a black butterfly with

         orange stripes

to sit on a piece of bark amazed that although motionless

         it moved

and it entertained me that butterflies though experts in the air

have no idea about traveling in water or of rowing And so it came

https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/ke2e82?page=1&pageSize=10

ΟΙ ΣΚΙΕΣ ΜΑΣ

     Και μέσα στο σπίτι υπήρχε το άλλο εκείνο σπίτι — εκεί που η

μητέρα ήταν ακόμα νέα κι ένα φλάουτο ακουγόταν το βράδυ, όπως

όταν οδηγούν έναν τυφλό.

     Σ’ αυτό το σπίτι είχαμε μείνει κι εμείς για πάντα, ενώ καθώς

ανάβαμε τη λάμπα, το φως της έριχνε μόνο τις σκιές μας στο

πάτωμα εδώ.

OUR SHADOWS

      Within the house was that other house; when mother was

still young and a flute was heard in the evening as if when

they guide a blind man.

      We had also stayed forever in this house and as we lit our

lamp its light projected only our shadows on this floor.

https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/ke4yv6?page=1&pageSize=10

DECISION

Poor besieged neighbourhood. The cloths on the cloths-line

resemble the ravaged flags of life. The damp colours shine

in the sunshine and the honest patches on the elbows and

the knees on the inside shirts and underwear — like freshly

painted skylights — if you look inside,

you’ll find each of them in its place, strong and enduring —

our neighbourhood travels with its cloths on the cloths-line

in the sunshine like a ship decorated with flags during

the fifteenth of August celebration in Tinos.

Then Alex sat on the stairs of the foreign house

and said: I love our group so much that I feel like crying

and he wiped his shoes with his hand.

And we felt the urge to kiss his dusty hands.

They killed Alex. When we pass that place in the evening

we see our motherland sitting at those same stairs

with its wiped shoes.

We are not afraid anymore. We’ll surely break down the door.

The factory closed. The young girls return from work.

Their lunch tins are carefully wrapped in cloth-napkins.

               As they pass

a smell of forest remains on the road as if spring is three

                steps behind them.

The girls have grown, they’ve become serious. They don’t laugh

                on their way anymore.

Their eyes are large and brotherly.

They kneed our anger and sorrow in their empty troughs. The stars

stir over the roof with a soft stir like sugar in the paper bag.

We’ll have flour day after tomorrow, we say, and sugar and

these girls will kneed the church bread offerings, large, round

and splattered with icing sugar and stamped not with those stamps

with the Byzantine letters but with their own hands, thin and

strong, with the hands that were schooled in the sorrow

of the whole world. 

                                                                     Athens 1941—1942

https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/rpdkk8?page=1&pageSize=10