Sculptor of Tyana As you may have heard, I am not a beginner. Some good quantity of stone goes through my hands. And in my home country, Tyana, they know me well; and here the senators have ordered a number of statues from me. Let me show you some right now. Have a good look at this Rhea; venerable, full of forbearance, really ancient. Look closely at Pompey. Marius, Aemilius Paulus, the African Scipio. True resemblances, as true as I could make them. Patroklos (I’ll have to touch him up a bit). Close to those pieces of yellowish marble over there, is Caesarion. And for a while now I have been busy creating a Poseidon. I carefully study his horses in particular, how to shape them. They have to be so light that their bodies, their legs, show that they don’t touch the earth, but run over water. But here is my most beloved creation, that I worked with such feeling and great care on a warm summer day, when my mind ascended to the ideals, I had a dream of him, this young Hermes.
Sirius We saw her unfold the spin wheel of time opposite the wind and the pashas we saw the beak of day touching her sun tied on the iron stake of a rock and the eagle coupled her sides. There she armed herself while each of her gods stood forty yards high and started talking to children and geraniums at times even men got teary. Then you would think they tossed barley into the fire or dice on the chess of virgin Mary as time takes away time and brings back her sea-kerchiefs and the vigils of the north wind. Time unfurls the flutes of colors and the blouses of girls that into their eyes convoys of birds and flowers travel. At the lower levels the olive tree leaves embitter us and at the higher level pines breath signals a shiver of guilt sprouting on her skin and platoons of cypresses climb up the hill as the hours start to blaze she offers atonement libations to the fair weather; she assumes the ephebe July and establishes the new crops like Aeneias white horses thresh Logos and the golden plains from end to end fever spreads into her veins for hours and hours like weather does to grapevines that the performance of a group of disorder appears straight by the edge of the precipice. The hours stagger on their red heels and on their faces intensifies the blushing aroused by their hearing focused on the far away when silence announces inexplicable oracles and truth demands ransom as years go by she becomes an orphan and hangs over the waters when she seeks to blindly attach herself onto something as the camel driver gets fooled by the mirage of the desert and assumes seeing far away the sword of Alexander the Great pushed into the scabbard of the Dead Sea. We saw her floating over waters and ruins like a big star when the mermaid rejoiced in tearing up the forgetfulness of the sea floor and during the night Glaucus fought against the hours striking them one by one over the castle of Astropalia and the bell of Virgin Mary.
Apollo And I grew under Apollo’s sun minutes of expressiveness alone in brightness stunning reign of sun and before I opened my eyes I was accompanied by the law of failure born blind, tearless and accused of heresy a revolution in its making even before I could utter a groan or a begging cry I gathered all my strength to pick a date with death hours before I appeared in my mother’s arms newborn festivity error permitted, once and forever two legs just to walk a heart as if to feel emotion and other human traces of grandeur
However, Mario wanted to have a bigger piece of the pie than his partners, so he made a side deal with a shady promoter and the trustee released all the stock to the new purchaser on Mario’s instructions alone, and without the deposit that was customary in any financial deal. The promoter ended up running around downtown Vancouver with a briefcase full of certificates that didn’t belong to him, and after he wasted a few certs on some of the scummiest people in VSE circles without being able to raise the funds to pay for the shell company, he went back to Mario and together they concocted a story that the certs had gotten lost. One of the scumbags the promoter dealt with was Jimmy Hall, a character Eteo had met once, who was probably the shadiest promoter in Vancouver. Eteo remembered how this man had called him son when they met like some kind of mafia don, and he had not been too surprised when Hall was later gunned down for unknown reasons, like another famously scummy Vancouver promoter, Bobby Hanover, who was also killed a few years later. When, after this debacle, the three partners met to discuss their next move with Richard Walden, another investor on Robert’s side, and coincidentally the current president of Golden Veins, Walden had been furious and threatened to go to the authorities. Eteo had argued for keeping VSE officials away from the issue and instead going after the trustee who had “lost” the certs. Mario had vehemently objected, not surprisingly, since he was the one who had instructed her to release the stock to the promoter in the first place, though Eteo only discovered this later. Walden had continued to insist they go to the VSE and report their share certificates stolen and had almost persuaded the others until Eteo asked, “What do you expect the VSE to do? Issue new certs to us?” Nobody knew what to say to this. “Look,” Eteo explained, “there’s a way to get all our shares back, though it will take time.” “Okay, how?” Walden demanded. “We declare the certs lost one at a time and issue a new cert each time, but we can only do this gradually, one cert at a time.”
bristles of his moustache into neat, serried rows. Once, when he had been due for a Russian department evaluation involving an interview with Chairman Hoefert, he had arrived early at his department head’s office. The door was open and there was no one about so he had wedged himself into a seat in the crowded study, his legs straddling boxes of books and papers, to await Hoefert’s return. A file lay open on the desk and without too much twisting of his neck he could see that it was his own confidential personnel file. Leaning out from the chair at an acute angle, he could even read the text upside down and he quickly did so without any attack of conscience. The chairman had written a number of congratulatory things, Chopyk was gratified to see. He could read that he was a stellar professor, thorough and devoted to his publishing schedule. True. It was a bit lacklustre on the subject of his teaching abilities, but certainly adequate. But there, at the bottom of the report, was what Chopyk considered to be a damning bit of character assassination. Neatly penned in the director’s handwriting were the words: “Chopyk’s flaw is vanity.” The subsequent interview was more tense than usual. Ever since that day Chopyk had pondered this revelation, especially when he glanced at his trim appearance in a mirror. Later, he realized that Hoefert was not talking about superficial vanity, though he was deemed a snappy dresser; instead, Hoefert had locked onto a deeper quality: Chopyk’s self-absorption. He took magnificent pleasure in his successes, however small. He took a positive delight in outsmarting Professor Hoefert, preferably in front of colleagues at the Learned Societies conference. But it was only friendly rivalry, Chopyk told himself. Where was the harm? It was the word “flaw” that niggled. He didn’t like to admit to flaws; didn’t think he had any. But there were moments—like today with Lona Rabinovitch—that he would consider his vanity to be a genuine weakness. She was playing him, flattering him—no doubt about it. And he had fallen for it. She had come up to him in the dining room after lunch, when the others had drifted away, to ask his clarification on a small question of verb tense. Somehow, within minutes, she had managed to turn the conversation to their departure from the Soviet Union, and she complained that she was running out of room in her luggage. Before he knew it he had gallantly agreed to pack some of her “valuable gifts and souvenirs” in his own luggage. She was quite appealing, gazing up at him softly with those large green eyes—he couldn’t refuse. She was hypnotic. Dammit.
“Seen Ray Thompson?” the man said. “No, I expect he’ll be back in a few minutes. Anything I can do for you? I’m Pete Torgerson.” The ranger gave no sign of recognition. “I have a message for Ray. Got a call up at the station. Only phone around here. Know where I might find him.” “He’s over at the dining hall.” “Thanks,” the man said, and left. Torgerson sat on Thompson’s bunk and leafed through a tattered copy of Life, trying not to think about the boy. Five minutes later, Thompson was back. “Pete, I have a problem. The ranger station got a call from my neighbor in town. My wife had an appendicitis attack. She’s in the hospital. I’ve got to go down there right now. It’s going to burst if they don’t operate. I want to be there when she comes out of the anesthetic. There’s no one up here but kid counselors, and I can’t leave one of them in charge. I hate to ask because I know how much you’ve got on your hands, but….” “You don’t have to ask. Go on. Just stop by the garage. Tell them what’s happening, and have them give Sue-Anne a call.” “If I can’t get back up here tommorow, I’ll have the Y send somebody to take over. Noon, at the latest.” “Run along, Ray.” “Razor and all that stuff above the sink. Sorry I don’t have pajamas for you. Don’t use ’em. Lights out at ten o’clock. You might have to quiet ’em down.” “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine. Scoot.” In the log dining hall, Torgerson lined up with the children and the counselors to shuffle past the steam table. A solemn woman in a hair net and a white uniform ladled chipped beef on toast and canned peas onto their trays. He thought of the army. After dinner, he wandered over to a corner of the hall where a counselor sat at an old upright piano playing a sonata he recognized but could not name. She looked fifteen, maybe sixteen, he thought, and from the back a little like Sue-Anne. When he came home, his wife was
Today and Just Before Today and just before light covers the sky I hear bells chiming faraway in the city. Bells that I hear as if they slowly spread evil and solemnly stir the remaining darkness. Where have I left my sweet childish heart? In what era, in which bell’s chiming I’ve tied it? In what era and today I’ve kneeled on my weak knees and prayed? A prayer to beauty, to the forgotten mother to ignorance, the smile, the voice of a dream listening to the saddened chime of the bell today that talks of the untimely death.
Caricature A bad imitation of a human, faceless, like the company he served, arrived and hiding the packaged freedom silently in his pockets deaf freedom choked from the excess lard he had consumed in their last feast sorrowful leftover of our old glory and I, saddened by the momentary loss of logic leaned and smelled the tiny jasmine flower, letting its aroma fills my nostrils emotional that I had become to the point of tears: then, it wasn’t far away anymore, it wasn’t impossible. It was here on the dusty sidewalk here it was the Heavens into which I surely entered
…couldn’t even see where they had got through the fence. It must have taken some interesting gymnastics for these four-legged wonders to maneuver through a three-wire fence without ripping it down, but, sure enough, here they were. Joel even found himself wondering if they could have jumped the fence. He had seen the deer do it. But as Joel compared the anatomy of a cow to that of a deer, he chuckled at himself in a way that made his horse wonder what was happening. To the horse, this expression of human emotion was something new about Joel. The sorrel gelding waited to see what the rider who sat on him would decide to do. Sizing up the situation, Joel realized that if he didn’t get these three heifers back to where they belong, some of their friends would want to join them for the party. And judging from how lean the pickings were on the other side of the fence and the look of the visiting heifers, Joel didn’t think it would be long before they would devour the grass in his pasture, which is supposed to feed his horses. And if the advance party of three were joined by their friends, it wouldn’t take long before Joel had a serious problem— two- or three-hundred head of cattle would make mincemeat out of this pasture. After contemplating the possibilities, Joel decided that his best bet would be to open the gate that was about 300 yards down the fence line and try to push the three heifers back to their own pasture. He was hoping that the gate was far enough from the herd so that the herd wouldn’t all rush through the opening into his pasture. This was going to be very tricky. Slowly, he moved the sorrel gelding down the fence line to the gate. The gelding was carefully watching the cows and they certainly weren’t spooking him. Reaching the gate, Joel undid the rope, and stepping back, he set the fence wire and poles down to the side. Sliding back into the saddle, Joel pointed the gelding back to the three heifers that were grazing, unconcerned with the approaching rider and horse, or anticipating their eviction. Gently, cautiously, and slowly, Joel and the sorrel gelding pushed https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897955
Manolis Aligizakis 