Blood

Most people don’t understand

whether the sun rises

from behind the mountain or

is shot out of the pistol’s barrel

it always burns you.

For this so many of our dreams

remained unrealized

inexplicably happiness was laid

in the display window

of the department store and

loneliness was again eulogized

in churches, while as the years went by

him, the one with the severed arm,

kept on other people’s discolored

walls, truth always decorates

the cement, one word written

with fiery red letters:

blood, blood, blood.

Poem by Dimitris Liantinis

SHIELD

When the shield of the sun

descended to the careenage of the west

the face of day melted

mummy thrown into the light.

Trees set traps for the birds

where they bury their height

a ship sinks into the soil

and the beasts of the forest

have gone astray to the mountainous

goat paths.

The procurement of the stars reveals

blood in the ravine

that buzzes naked

slashing the skin of water

the flesh of things

can’t find refuge

in basil.

Linos’ skinned body hangs

over the midnight mast

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Η ΠΟΛΙΣ

Είπες  «Θα πάγω σ’ άλλη γη, θα πάγω σ’ άλλη θάλασσα.

Μιά πόλις άλλη θά βρεθεί καλλίτερη από αυτή.

Κάθε προσπάθεια μου μιά καταδίκη είναι γραφτή

κ’ είν’ η καρδιά μου—σάν νεκρός—θαμένη.

Ο νούς μου ώς πότε μές στόν μαρασμό αυτόν θά μένει.

Όπου τό μάτι μου γυρίσω, όπου κι άν δώ

ερείπια μαύρα τής ζωής μου βλέπω εδώ,

πού τόσα χρόνια πέρασα καί ρήμαξα καί χάλασα.»

Καινούριους τόπους δέν θά βρείς, δέν θάβρεις άλλες θάλασσες.

Η πόλις θά σέ ακολουθεί. Στούς δρόμους θά γυρνάς

τούς ίδιους. Καί στές γειτονιές τές ίδιες θά γερνάς

καί μές στά ίδια σπίτια αυτά θ’ ασπρίζεις.

Πάντα στήν πόλι αυτή θά φθάνεις. Γιά τά αλλού—μήν ελπίζεις—

δέν έχει πλοίο γιά σέ, δέν έχει οδό.

Έτσι πού τή ζωή σου ρήμαξες εδώ

στήν κώχη τούτη τήν μικρή, σ όλην τήν γή τήν χάλασες.

THE CITY

You said:  “I’ll go to another land, to another sea;

I’ll find another city better than this one.

Every effort I make is ill-fated, doomed;

and my heart —like a dead thing—lies buried.

How long will my mind continue to wither like this?

Everywhere I turn my eyes, wherever they happen to fall

I see the black ruins of my life, here

where I’ve squandered, wasted and ruined so many years.”

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.

The city will follow you. You will return to the same streets.

You will age in the same neighborhoods; and in these

same houses you will turn gray. You will always

arrive in the same city. Don’t even hope to escape it,

there is no ship for you, no road out of town.

As you have wasted your life here, in this small corner

you’ve wasted it in the whole world.

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Υπόσχεση

     Kι υποσχεθήκαμε ποτέ να μην τον αρνηθούμε

ούτε μια νύχτα, ούτε μια μέρα ή μια στιγμή

μήτε κι ακόμα όταν μιλούσε στο δέντρο που μόλις

είχαν κόψει ή στα πανάρχαια φαντάσματα

που πέταγαν συχνά μες στην ψυχή μας.

     Αστέρευτη η σιτοδεία βασίλισα της πείνας μας

αργά που εκύλησε η παιδική μας αθωότη σαν πάνω

στο υγρό καλντερίμι, και το μόνο που του ζητήσαμε

τη διδαχή να συνεχίσει και τ’ αρέσαμε που εδιαλέξαμε

θρύμματα να γίνουμε να μας φυσήξει ο αγέρας Του

στην αντιπέρα όχθη να περάσουμε. Τ’ αρέσαμε που

όλα τα περιφρονήσαμε ακόμα και το μυστήριο

της θυσία μας κι ο Υπεράνθρωπος εγέλασε κι είπε,

‘όλα καλά.’

Promise

And we promised never to deny Him not even

for a night or day, not for a single moment, even

when He spoke to the fallen tree or to those ancient

ghosts that often passed through our minds.

Endless famine of our race, queen of our bellies,

slowly crawled on wet cobblestones like our childish

innocence and we asked Him to continue His teaching

and He liked us because we chose to be scattered

into innumerable pieces that the wind may blow us

to the opposite shore. He liked us, because

we disdained everything even the secret for our

sacrifice. Übermensch smiled and said,

‘it was all good.’

Poem by Manolis Anagnostakis

YOUNG MEN FROM SIDON

We shouldn’t complain, really

your company was pleasant and full of vigor:

freshened girls, wholesome boys

full of love for life and for adventures

and your songs were sweet and meaningful

very sentimental, humane

for the children who died over the other continent

for the heroes killed in past years

for revolutionaries with black, green, reddish skin

for the grief of every suffering man

this involvement especially an honour for you

for today’s problems and struggle

you always appear and you fight, therefore

I believe it’s your right to play

in groups of two or three at a time  

and to fall in love

to just relax, brothers, after such tiredness

(George, have you noticed we’ve aged prematurely?) 

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II

I walked from the harbor

to the house so many times!

One returns from church and

always something obstructs his breath

the moon, the wind

or an unnoticed shrub that stirs.

From the harbor to the house

ten, eighteen year old

Mrs. Xanthi died

the kore vanished

the old house of the crazy woman fell in.

Toward the field at night

the familiar magical landscape

spreads inside me:

acceptance and revolution

always start on my soil

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I WONDER whether I can insist in some way that all these

things occurred. Where can I go? I asked myself as if I was

the one who chooses, yet, I kept on tiding up the rooms

since I was certain they would come, unless we had buried

them during the rainy days; (the last day of the corpse

continues incessantly),“who are you looking for?” I asked

“the homeowner” they tell me; I sighed and showed them

the opposite shadowy side,

      until I realized that this was my property which I could

slowly, painfully save and for this if one meets a few poor

dead people on the road they talk about the beggars who

got rich without knowing under their ragged overcoat how

hurtful their wings were.

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Poem by Kostas Karyotakis

SMILE

Although she never learned of it she cried

perhaps because she had to cry

perhaps because misfortune always comes.

Tonight the dusk is just a dream

the ravine remains enchanted

the rain stopped and the tired girl

lied onto the moist clover field

her parted lips two cherries

this way as deeply she breaths

her breasts ascent and descent

as if the most crisp April rose.

Sun rays flash through the clouds

and hide in her eyes, the lemon tree

drips moist onto her body

two diamonds stop onto her cheeks

you think she may be crying

as she smiles to the faraway sun.

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Immortality

And I swore before the blurry eyes

of my kin to cleanse their lot with 

the heartache I inherited, I promised

to search in their dirt for my immortality

I was to paint the bulbs of the earth black

and again to insert them in the soil

so they would sprout up like new

penises to enter hungry mounds

and to feel the ecstatic mixture of pain

and joyful cocktail of drugs

that put my consciousness to rest

to these I swore standing opposite

my kin’s secret grandeur                                      

when they begged for more,

such flimsy was their self esteem

and in their ridicule, in their viscera

I came to know

the lone glimpse of optimism

leading them to their self-destruction

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FOURTH DAY

Pale faces of trees

vaguely visible in light sleep

plain wind without

the message of the acacia.

The seven girls

close their necks to fear.

Afraid of the light, the rain

that their unlearned hands

won’t get wild of the salinity.

They wave goodbye

to their names and hair.

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