Liquid Labyrinth

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night current
éjszakai áramlat
and my loneliness is so great during the day
that I can’t stand it by the evening: Tibor Gyurkovics
the dawn the paid love has come
I just wanted it out of necessity
a frail person is still longing for love
until the fancy passing at midnight’s propensity
the new moon came with naked pleasure beam
the season called for opium in the morning
it smashed with its fist my sweetest dream
but the smell of incense made me a man with a warning
the noble night is often indifferent in hope

  • but lust also has its own rules to evoke
    and I was covered by the blood-stained robe
    garnished with painted coat of arms gaudy cloak
    an adventurous command of the night
    it flows from sad widowed instincts
  • its fashion turns into a million of hugs
    and the two-faced god of dormant feelings
    time cheated on me I was hurt by the night
  • the stars caught you red handed as mistress
    you stand in front of the elders as an accused templar
    but Friday will cleanse you from all the kisses
    my blood was wounded by the fresh night
    every hug leads to another groan
  • the evening snarled at my flesh wild
    and loved it all to the bone

Arrows

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Excerpt

“My mother always worked in a household.”
“Why is it bad to ask your name?”
“You didn’t ask my name. Say the words again, and I’ll tell you
what they mean.”
The horse had begun to graze, and Tamanoa took hold of the
bridle again.
“Matircom yeunatir ueipano dauquir” I repeated slowly.
“Breasts, nipples, whore . . .” His voice trailed off as he signalled
the meaning of the last word by pointing to his crotch. “And what
was the other thing you said? Ah, yes. Guecenar onque. That means
give me your . . .” Again his voice trailed off, and he turned and
pointed to his rear end.
Heat rushed to my face. I massaged my eyes with the heels of my
hands and heard him giggle.
Torn between anger and laughter, I laughed. Benjamin, Benjamin.
He had taught me words I would never have dreamed of saying,
and I had repeated them like a parrot. No wonder we had gotten so
many looks. I was laughing so hard I removed myself and my horse
from the convoy.
“It was Benjamin,” I said. “So it’s your turn to help me. How do I
ask your name?”
“It depends. There are Indians from far away who have been
brought here to work, and we all speak different languages. But in
mine it would be atiyeseti?”
“What language is yours?”
“Cumanagoto. Carib. It comes from the eastern coast. It’s the
most common. My mother came from the region of Cumaná.”
“Are the families brought here together? As husband and wife?”
He shook his head. I looked at the Indians around me. That could
explain much of their sullenness.
In the year 1511, the Church had proclaimed the equality of men
and denounced the Spanish debauchery in La Española. But in that
same year, King Fernando El Católico had declared the branding of
cannibals. For the Spaniards, natives out of range of missionary
protection were cannibals. They were raided and sold as slaves.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073522

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

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Vulture and Guard
Mykonos
Mycenae
fungus
three
words
yet
only two
wings
like stucco
like a woman
palm
shining
in the night
like a flesh-eating
violin
and perhaps
still
like glass
drills
inside
the thin
brains
of the poets

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume III

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9th of November/ evening

Suddenly, winter came. It smells of rain.

Strong south winds uproot the thorny shrubs,

          blow them onto the barbed wire.

We put on our jackets, we put our hands in our pockets.

A cloud descended to the middle of the road,

took the telegraph poles aside, and talked to them.

We know, though, that whatever they talk about

the bread will remain bread and the just just.

And we don’t mind their secret talk at all.


The afternoon bus, loaded with flour, passed.

It left behind a ripped envelope and orange peels.

One by one all the exiles went out and urinated

           on the grass,

they pushed against the wind with their foreheads.

Soon after, they stood and gazed at the clouds.

Somewhere, it smelled of raisin and cicadas.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK

Μάρκος Μέσκος, Τα πουλιά

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Μάρκος Μέσκος, Τα πουλιά

Water in the Wilderness

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Excerpt

Seven
Few mourners stood at the graveside when they laid Lydia Conrad to rest. Several more had been at the funeral home, but not all had opted to come to the cemetery on this hot August afternoon. Near the head of the grave, Corky stood with an arm around each of his children. Tyne had never seen him look so smart; his dark suit may be wrinkled, but he stood erect and steady.
Tyne, holding tightly to Morley’s hand, could not bear to let her eyes linger on the children. But she saw how Bobby held onto his father’s leg, and buried his face in the fabric of Corky’s trousers. Rachael stood straight, hands clasped in front of her, lips set, blue eyes boring into the casket that held her mother.
For the past two days, Rachael had neither cried nor spoken more than a few words to anyone. Her demeanor had been sullen. Yesterday when Tyne, hoping to involve her in activities around the house, asked her to fetch a jar of fruit from the basement, Rachael had leapt from her chair, eyes blazing.
“No, I don’t have to. You’re not my mommy.” She ran from the house, banging the door behind her.
Tyne had not been able to withhold the tears as pain settled around her heart.
Pastor Beecham said a final prayer over the casket,

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X

Swamped

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Excerpt

A dark windy night. Eteocles is about three years old, Nicolas five,
and their mother as old as the worry about how to feed her children
has made her, as old as any mother who lives in the ruins of war, a
woman whose husband is on the front line. It is a windy night, and
the gaps in the doors and windows make an apocalyptic music, as if
the inhabitants of this hovel are walking through the hallways of hell.
Eteocles remembers the scene well. They are sitting around the metal
bucket their mother has made into a heating element. She burns
wood in it, and the heat reaches out perhaps a meter all around it.
They are sitting warming themselves, listening to the wrath of the
tempest just a few meters away beyond the frames of the single door
and the courageous window to the north.
Suddenly from the deadly war of the elements outside a sudden
wind floods the room as the door opens. A man stands in the frame
gazing inside. It is their father returning from the war. He stands
there for long time, not knowing what to say, how to greet them; he
hasn’t seen them for twenty-seven long months. Their mother lets
out a cry, a cry that sounds like the name of the standing man, her
husband, the man who had gone to war when Eteocles was just a few
months old. Her husband is home at last, and she gets up and calls
him inside and walks up to him and hugs him with a fierceness that
expresses the emotional volcano boiling inside her. She hugs him for
a long time, then she pulls away, and their father kneels and calls his
sons to him. Neither of them dares approach this stranger. Eteocles
doesn’t know this man at all, while Nicolas, who was three years old
when his father left his sons, perhaps has some faint memory of him.
Neither of the two dares move toward the man in soldier’s clothes
who calls them again and again until Eteocles observes his feet making
small steps toward the open arms of their father and Nicolas follows
soon after. The soldier clings tightly to them, saying words the
two brothers only feel, the soothing words of a father who has missed
his sons, a man who had gone to war without knowing if he would
ever see them again. They feel those words, and they cuddle with the
man who has come inside their house and ignore the wind that has
entered with him and turned the room into a frozen habitat in which
the small metal bucket with the burning wood cannot warm more

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

Marginal

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Armchair
The orphaned armchair designing
your body while you fathom
emptiness in the hallows of vanity
away from passion or liturgy
such as the curtain’s swaying
albeit some help from the breeze
a myth of your homecoming turns
the room’s air into pieces and shapes
of limpid alabaster yet you close
your eyes and travel to the moment
I touched your lips with my sun
your lips I touched with the sun of my youth
and the cyclamen sighed
not letting its fervid passion annul your lust
for a spring song
for the vigour and stamina of my love

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771715987

Jazz with Ella

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Excerpt

She stopped at the Blue Bridge, paced on past the Marinsky Palace built for the Grand Duchess Marie, and caught a glimpse of what must surely be ballerinas arriving in a chauffeur- driven car at the Kirov Theatre, their graceful arms laden with costumes and carryall bags. She would attend the ballet. It would be glorious—probably Swan Lake or Giselle.
Suddenly she felt a jolt of pain, a sensation that she recognized as missing Michael. Missing him lots. Was it just missing someone to share the experience with her? Well, she would have that experience with David or Paul. That was okay. Heck, Michael didn’t even like the ballet. Yet she couldn’t help but remember one of the last times they had enjoyed each other’s company. Was it last February, March? It seemed like a million years ago. They had walked to a movie together, through an uncharacteristic sprinkle of snow over Vancouver’s Point Grey, each of them preoccupied. The sadness and distance that enveloped them had lasted all the way to the show, but once they entered, bought popcorn and seated themselves in the sticky seats, they both relaxed. It was a funny film, and he held her hand in the dark. Later, they returned to their married students’ apartment talking together with more animation about the movie, about her essay, about his thesis supervisor.
“What went wrong?” she finally asked him, knowing he would understand that she wasn’t talking about his recent lab experiment. Also knowing that he wouldn’t be able to answer. He would only shrug. In fact, it seemed that her life was very full of loved ones who wouldn’t talk to her. Still, those moments of communication: the laughter in the cinema, the caress on her hand, the discussion about her essay—they were all good. They were shared.
Jennifer continued to stride briskly, restlessly, until she had executed a broad loop which eventually brought her back to the River Moika, one of the many canals that fragmented the city into an island network.
Here, the houses hung over the water, their upper windows nearly touching the shade trees. A graceful wrought-iron bridge, the width of a footpath, led across the Moika into a neighbourhood of worn tenements. She approached it confidently.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Life is a Poem

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THE GUIDE
I followed him, the one who knew the forest.
All kinds of forests,
every stone,
each spring.
I was glad I had a guide
and we hurried not to lose the light.
I’ll reach my goal with him, I thought.
After a while, not too late,
although it was late
we started walking around,
I no longer saw anything around me,
my legs went on aimlessly, stumbling,
I fell into pits, ditches, ravines,
everything seemed strange to my guide too,
we kept colliding into each other,
trees and stones stood in our way,
animals, shadows, screams of owls terrified us.
Gripped by fear and despair
I grabbed my guide’s hand
it was cold, strange,
a tree.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C7KT7ZFV