THE GATE

Excerpt LI

Oh, our bitter ephemerality, he said, our natural objection,

                beauty

without arguments, alone, orphan, only with blood.

The fine hollow in the neck of a woman’s

rosy nipple tightened before the touch.

Moment, cry, schism; the unquestioned I exist.

Wait, let me get the grass off your hair. Don’t lock

the bath door, I like to hear the water flowing on your body,

flowing with your body in my eyes, flowing in the great

river with the sailboats loaded with oranges. 

             Two oranges

fell in the water; you’re the swimmer who raises them

             with your hands like two suns

sinking vertically inside me. Your straw sandals are

             wet

and dry up steaming in the sunshine that comes in

             from the glass door.

The dice are cast in silence.

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Ηρώ Νικοπούλου, Ο χρόνος που περνά και χάνεται

Μυρτώ Χμιελέφσκι, Δύο ποιήματα

Αλέξης Τραϊανός, Ο μορφασμός του νερού

Artist’s Foresight

They dismounted their horses they took off the great winds

and entered their houses got fat and died You luckily

managed to create them naked just with their spurs

on their white ankles Thus these days none will

understand while staring at their great

cenotaph in the sunlight of July that we are all tired

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(Excerpt)

and from the narrow

shores of Bosporus

green cities and fountains

made of sprouts rose;

blossoms looked like fairies

flowing, descending

in cisterns: jewels, rain full

of red precious stones.

And the sun reflected onto

the Bithynian mountains

to the Vlaherne and

Magnavre palaces

which unobstructedly rose

and gleamed up high

and from the Golden Gates

to the Heptapyrgion

up to the end of stranded

emerald islands

legions of palaces

and armies of monasteries

as if the spells of witches

were cast upon them and

they spread over the domes

and mansions and you shone

oh my soul over all the motionless

crosses and the cypresses.

On A Ray Of Winter Light

7

The flame is healed by flame

not in the dripping of moments but in a flash, at once;

like the desire that merged with another desire

and they both stayed fixated

or like

the rhythm of music that stays

there at the center, like a statue

motionless.

This breath is not a passing of life

it’s ruled by a thunderbolt.

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Ο
Δωδεκάλογος του Γύφτου του Κωστή Παλαμά σε μετάφραση μου για πρώτη φορά
στη Β. Αμερική. Το πιο δύσκολο έργο που έχω μεταφράσει ποτέ. Παρ’ όλα
αυτά το αποτέλεσμα είναι υπέροχο όσο και το πρωτότυπο. /// The Twelve
Narratives of the Gypsy, by Kostis Palamas, in my translation for the
first time in N. America; the most difficult translation I’ve ever done.
Yet the end result stands as gracefully and as beautifully as its
original.

Blythe Baird, Φεμινισμός τσέπης

Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Adulthood

Insignificant things that just as fast as we notice them

we forget them:

the fragrance of a wet garden, the glance of a passerby,

the cracking voice of a woman behind a window.

We forget all of them; however we’ll remember them

someday and shall feel that we left, there in the middle

of the street, our good luck or a beloved dead person.

But what can I do now? At least let me admit

how old I am.

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