Orestes

Unprepared, yes — I can’t do it; I lack that analogy,
suitable to the landscape, to the hour, to things and
events — no, it’s not faint-heartedness — unprepared
before the front step of the deed, totally unprepared
before the goal others have set for me. Why others
control our fate a little? Why they impose it on us and
we accept it?
How can they weave our whole year with just a few
threads of our moments, usually a rough, dark weaving,
thrown over us like a sack covering us from top to bottom,
covering all our face and hands, in which we’ve entrusted
a knife — completely unfamiliar — which lights all the
around landscape, not ours — I know this, not ours. And
how our fate happens to accept this, while it pulls away
and observes us and our strange fate, as if foreign to us,
mute, austere, uninvolved, resigned, not even with
the expression of a magnanimity or stoicism, without
even disappearing, without dying, we’ll remain a
plaything of an alienated fate, not doubting or split
in two. There she is, sleepy — with one of her eyes closed
and the other dilated letting us see that she observes us
and discerns our endless vibrating without approving
nor disapproving it.
Two different pulls correspond to each of our two legs,
one distances itself more and more from the other
with wide strides to the point of dismemberment; and
the head is a knot that holds together the divided body
while, I believe, legs are made to move one at a time,
in the same rhythm, to the same direction, down to
the plain, next to a bunch of grapes, up to the far away
rosy horizon, transferring our body in one piece — or
were we perhaps made for that great, unearthly stride
over the horrible precipice, over the graves and ours?
I don’t know.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763815

Athena II
Perplexed Athena gazed at the sea
as if to say the balance of the world
was based on it: fresh, liberal
fountain blessed by the spring
like the palms
of the beardless poet
reverently turned inwards
immense sea bearing gifts to
my endless wandering when
I discovered seeded fields
orchards with lemon trees
and grapevines ready
for the harvest
stars gracing rosy-cheeks
blue domes of temples
each with different armies of
words and dreamy images
hopeless this misery
that I couldn’t escape
unless again I evoke Her spirit
logistical algorithm
Her divine intervention
a direction I was meant
to follow to the bitter end
when finally in the next room
they were already enjoying
the opened bottle of bubbly

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Tribute
Forehead of silver and your blue
eyes reflected beautifully
as you opened the piano
two fresh roses shivered in the vase
like flowers your temples bloomed.
Your hands fought and won
against the keys that retrieved
creating notes, the melody reward.
We listened. And the emotions-slaves
regained their freedom.
Years have gone, well I don’t remember,
though I believe that you had also sung
unless the nightingales sang
whether silent or talking your lips are fountain
when my years are but tired deer.
Butterflies will always flutter
leaving the pollen on the hand
goodbye only but a rustle, your hand as silk
when you vanished; butterflies
will always fly out through the window.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562951

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763459

Euroclydon*
We travel on a Roman galley
convicts and merchants and legionaries
the island of Pasiphae to our right and
straight ahead toward the sundown the eternal city
each of us with a bag of belongings
we carry a gift for our fiancée
hope and concern and overused hulls
silk and wedding gold for the marketplace
half way quite unexpectedly the tempest started
the typhoid wind from the Numibia sands
we tossed all our belongings into the sea
we wished just to be saved
but Euroclydon the great river with its opposite currents
isn’t appeased by supplications and cries
luckily we had amongst us one who by chance
made sure we remembered of the bread

Euroclydon – Northeastern wind

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763408

Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

OR WHEN, suddenly, one turns and looks at you as if you
both came to the world for this reason; you don’t talk to
each other however his glance again wonders towards the
unanswerable from which the holy grace was painfully given
to you and other times when you mould a pitcher in your
wheel or you write a word in the sand separation already
stands between you two and we now know where the man
who gets up to leave will finally go, only that
he started before us, like the mothers who, if darkness
comes, it’s because they were so tired and fell asleep
for a while.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4051627

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Memory Pleats
Since many forgotten things
lurked in the pleats of memory
we all knew the meaning of
the forbidden fruit and
we followed a blind man
as if we needed an errorless guide
at the start of the twenty-first century
and the man with the severed arm
hid behind the robin’s song
as if to decipher our thoughts
we often sat by our eastern balcony
to enjoy the fresh breeze
of the August evening
as it was obvious that we couldn’t
fool the children any longer

https://draft2digital.com/book/3746001

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763750

THE UNRECOGNIZABLE GIRL
Who is the girl all dressed in white
and walking down the hillside?
As soon as this girl appeared
the grass grew tender as flowers
and spread its beauty
and swayed its tips, in love,
pleading not to be forgotten,
begging to be stepped upon.
Her lips are as pretty and as red
as the flowers of the rosary
and when dawn turns to daybreak
it sends fresh raindrops to her
and her glorious yellow hair
shines against her breast
and her eyes laugh, reflecting
the light blue of the sky.
Who is the girl who’s dressed in white
and walks down the hillside?

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562959

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763513

II
When our cigarettes get close to each other
in the night and from their glowing ends
you can discern two people
who meet and separate the same way
from one prison to another
from one exile camp to another
from one tent to another.
Like cicadas when they can’t find trees
they climb on telegraph poles
we too spread roots wherever we can
counting time in weeks, months, seasons.
Now we all have little wooden boats
which we place next to the books
and we send to our relatives
we have plates and water glasses —
we have nothing, they stole everything
from us, we’re left with mud in the mouth.
We’re dressed with a soft skin
that rips easily.
‘You should had seen Voula after the Liberation,
now she’s worn out, work, childbirths,
problems with the police”
‘George was preparing his papers to immigrate to the US
when they killed him in Chalkida
just before the referendum.’
‘Dinos had it good, I mean, he left everything
and now he’s very successful in Canada.’
‘The floor was giving way under the chest
and she struggled to level it.
Leave it alone, I said to her, you waste
your time. Then one Sunday morning
the statuette fell and broke.’
‘Smoke from the fertilisers plant
hanged over the neighborhood,
it choked you day and night,
the cough wouldn’t abate with all the chemicals.’
And here we remain idle, we fight to survive
we sign petitions for peace, mail our complaints
we maintain a front line.
Yet we don’t live the years, we just count them,
we push them away to make sure they go by.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562972

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L1TJNNF