Unspecified Person Now the years have passed, and I who have loved all the joys of the world, I must deny them now; these days run by us fast, and at night, that unspecified person appears by the stairway: “What do you want?” I ask in fear, “My share?” he answers God, my Lord, where can I find such a treasure to give him because who hasn’t spent a whole treasure in his youth? I was so sad that my steps guided me to the old family home, or I could fall in love with a stopped clock. Do you remember our flirting with our cousins? So many summers, and we didn’t manage to discover the garden. So many autumns and we still haven’t discovered our souls and oh, shattering of our dream: you shut all our paths just to open a path to the unknown. One day it’ll rain, and I’ll die of nostalgia.
Crystal I stood on the terrace gazing the immense horizon and the light-blue of the sky I took inside the jasmine’s fragrance and the dance I noticed of the cloud in the wind and when eternity couldn’t be you came and the light got brighter the sun appeared among the dancing clouds and you were my eternity that presented itself falling in my palm a newly cut diamond
He looked at her fondly. For a moment, there might have been no airport runway, no guard, only that moment over the kitchen table in Leningrad. “I am a bad man for wanting to leave, but I am not so bad that I want you to suffer. If I run, then you must act like you don’t know me. Do you understand?” “Yes, I understand,” she relented. Again the irony. In that moment that she was supposed to be denying his existence, she discovered that she knew him only too well, better than ever before. “I’m convinced they’re not looking for you,” she told him. “Stay in line. Don’t run. Please.” The line had ground to a halt and she could see the twins and Ted sitting on their flight bags as if they were in for a long wait. “What’s happening, Ted?” she called out. He joined them. “The guy in the uniform says that we might as well make ourselves comfortable. Our suitcases are not on this flight—they’re on another one that’s arriving soon—make that ‘soon’ in Soviet time, so who knows when? Then we’re supposed to grab our own bags and go through a security check.” “What are they looking for?” David and Maria crowded around, encircling Volodya protectively. They want him to be safe, Jennifer thought. It’s touching. “Weren’t we just checked pretty well when we left Moscow?” “Who knows what they’re looking for? I can tell you one thing, both Hank and Lona are pretty upset. It seems Hank is carrying some of Lona’s things in his luggage and he’s not too happy about them poking through his bags again.” “Did the uniform tell you where we were?” She asked the question that she knew was on Volodya’s mind. “He wouldn’t answer,” Ted replied. The last of the colour drained from Volodya’s face, and his eyes cast about wildly sizing up the airport fence and the chain link gate. “But surely we’re in Sweden or Finland?” David went on, putting one hand on Volodya’s arm, sensing his fear. “They’re entirely too casual here for the Soviet Union. Look—no armed guards or slogans on the wall.” “Hang in there, Vlad…uh, Paul.” Maria said. “Yeah, I think you’re right,” Ted replied. “Probably because it’s a military airport, he’s not supposed to tell us much about it.” “Hey, here comes a plane. Can you beat that? It arrived ‘soon’—just like they said.”
They walk naked to the lighted, dark point of the world. The statues, also naked, walk next to them, having found their arms again, their legs, their heads and their usually cut off genitals or their wings. Perhaps they stand while darkness stirs towards them, you can’t tell where the movement is headed, what and towards where it stirs, however, the sense of movement is irreversible, steady, and continuous euphoria, a taste of the royal fruits of the immense Garden, taste of eternity. And I truly believe that darkness stirs towards them, penetrates them, overwhelms them with that beautiful, dark, cyan expectation, that deep acceptance and nobility almost indifference, like the night that enters through the open windows during the summer and erases the mass of the furniture while it absorbs everything and, unobstructed, it lights the whole house while all the small, insignificant things sparkle with subdued and meaningful glints like bones, and the utensils lose their a certain stony usefulness and transform into tiny metal veins amid the heavenly substratum, flexible veins before they become items or after.
Poem Since no definition is exact and since out of a thousand versions none truly defines a poem I imagine these three words won’t make any difference: rhythmically contemplating emotion.
Fourth Hour I touch the smooth surface of water like a gleaming unspoiled breast rippling endless exuberance as the absurdity of seriousness stumbles in when He elects to throw punches at old philosophically-hardened Death who laughs His guts out sending up a pair of devils disguised with velvet veils to reduce the game to a parody of errors while despicable people persist at loving and sharing things like nothing happened an absurdity of seriousness revealing the light side of His rookie mind committing to place a few bombs in the hands of idiots who conspire to commandeer a future throne and when the ocean is asked the question I fume and turn my eyes away to avoid seeing the hero’s body dangling from the tower priest chanting eulogies fanatics ooing at the sight as death vowels chorus in cidal harmony: who cares?
And why shouldn’t she be happy? She had just committed to marrying a wonderful man, who obviously adored her. They were of the same faith … no problems there. And Morley had found a woman who shared his faith … no problems there, either. So why should she not be literally dancing with joy? I’m tired, that’s all. Tomorrow, I’ll be fine. Just let me go to bed now, and I’ll be fresh as a daisy to take Cam to church tomorrow … my church … his church. Thank God, no more conflict with Mom and Dad. Aunt Millie … what will Aunt Millie say? She’ll be happy, of course, even if she has always favoured Morley. No more worries, Tyne. She was jolted from her thoughts by the others making a move to leave the table, and she heard Cam say to her dad. “I’d like a word with you, sir, if you have a minute.” Oh no, Cam, not tonight, let’s wait a day or so. She knew he planned to ask her dad for her hand in marriage. Why did he always have to be so formal, his manners so impeccable? Now she would be obligated to stay up and join them all in the living room after Cam had his talk with her dad. There would be hilarity, maybe even toasts. Jeff Milligan would declare he must break out his best bottle of wine. He always professed to have one on hand for joyous occasions, although Tyne had yet to see him open one. She got up quickly to help her dad out of his chair but he was already on his feet, grasping the corner of the dining table with one hand and his cane with the other. He waved her away when she offered to help him into the living room, but she noticed that he took Cam’s arm and let the younger man guide him through the doorway. No indeed, no more worries. She had done the right thing by accepting Cam’s marriage proposal.
And magi came from Chaldean lands, bureaucrats from Egypt and the teachers from India, wise men too from harmonious Hellas seers and prophets and heroes and rhapsodists, the highest of all and most educated and many came from the island of Thule and all the suitors brought their inexplicable riddles to her all that belonged to the Sphinx and Cybil and none of them remained unexplained and all the mouths which uttered the riddles were swallowed by the hungry Hades and she walked over their bodies…
And the house servants and some old men who were passing, listened to him as they crowed next to the colonnade and the servant girls with their aprons lifted to their eyes, and our mother in the middle of the front courtyard and the nanny next to her like a lightning-struck old oak and a bit further the pedagogue, pale like wax with his thin beard, a fleshless arm, hanging from the chords of the harp and the younger daughters, motionless, by the windows hiding behind their dreams and suspicions, listening though not understanding, observing the beautiful stand on the messenger’s knee, his youngish, brown beard, his black hair curly from the sweat and dust and a little thorn hooked onto his chiton so that forests walk and tables are raised on their two legs like horses and the triremes sail over the trees in the sundown and the oarsmen stoop and raise themselves, stoop and raise themselves, stoop and raise themselves, surely in the rhythm of Eros; and their oars resemble naked women, hanging from their hair, writhe and dash as they gleam in the sea until the froth of the galaxy is outlined behind the triremes; therefore the messenger announced the glorious victory amid the thousands of deaths, not to mention all the wounded, he finally announced the return of the king with lots of spoils, flags, carriages full of slaves and a wound between his eyes, he narrated, like a clever, exquisite eye through which death was overseeing, and the master could now see through and through to the depth of things, landscapes, people, as if it was a diaphanous glass, and he could easily read the pulsation of our blood, our mood, our fate, the gold veins that flow in the rocks and the coal ribs spread in the subterranean darkness …
I glorified the virgin’s dancing steps and the sweet swaying of her body’s attraction, passion and lust endless desire of the boys who dreamed of caressing such beauty and and I glorified my last garment suitable to the anchorite I once was, lighter than light without any decorations or a homeland, I took my first steps toward the bright beacon showing me a path I glorified the nightingale’s song among the river foliage, a song in memoriam of the chain that held me wedged in the soil onto which I felt the moisture, helping the growth of my new sprouts, alive and fiery as I was, the scoff of people had no value over me free loner, aloof, I was climbing my hill toward the humble shack into which I took my first breaths, and where I played my first childish games with my brother the sun shone brightly over us, the sky shone snow white over my Minoan lands from which I have come and to which I’ll ultimately arrive at my destined hour.
Manolis Aligizakis 