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.
Umbrella
You grasp your umbrella close
to your head, keeping stormy
weather at bay, the statue’s head
drenched by a downpour
cascading on its shoulders
on the wide bronze chest
musing that he perspires at the specter
of homeless in plastic bags
covering breathing bodies and
all possessions, denuding sobs
or sighs of pigeons under his plinth
or in branches of plaza elms
and you brace your umbrella close
to your head, staving off stormy
weather with an odd desire
to cover the statue’s genitals
making you blush more intensely
In the Bedroom
His high black boots in front of the bed. The dogs barked
a little in their garden dog house. The woman placed
the candle in the glass. She hesitated. She looked at
the naked legs of the man on the carpet. His legs
are two men, muscly, twins, with a helmet, with a lute,
with mustaches. If I don’t give birth to a male baby now
he’ll kill me. She turned her eyes away, took the boots,
one in each hand and went out.
“Lovers-2”, painting by Leonid Afremov, https//afremov.com
《情人2》列奥尼德·阿夫雷莫夫 绘
启 始
无边无际，
冥想中一棵
柏树的梦幻形象，
经历过的
手指和呼吸的
羽毛般的触感，
天国的声音
而飘落你眼里，
落进你的眼泪，
我想发现
这不可思议
和隐晦的
时间的启始。
原 作：克里特岛 马诺里斯·阿利吉萨基斯
英 译：作者自译
汉 译：中 国 周道模 2020-8-7
Initiation
Borderless,
dreamy image
of a cypress in meditation,
feathery touch
of fingers and breaths
experienced,
heavenly sounds
and in your eyes,
in your teardrop,
I want to discover
the inconceivable
and cryptic
initiation of time.
Manolis Aligizakis (Crete)
ΜΥΗΣΗ
Ονειρεμένη εικόνα
ασυνόρευτη του πεύκου
διαλογισμός και αχλή
αφή δαχτύλων και πνοών
που ζουν θεσπέσιους ήχους
κι εγώ στα μάτια σου
ψάχνω να βρω
σε δάκρυ
ασύλληπτη
κι απόκρυφη
τη μύηση του χρόνου.
Chinese translation：William Zhou
THE BRIDGE (excerpt)
Our humble needs don’t humiliate us;
on the contrary, they save us; they give us ground
to walk on again, to stand erect, to work, and
their knowledge and approval is our brotherhood,
it’s the beginning of our profound freedom,
it’s that sacred truthfulness,
the first and last truthfulness of man, so much so
that you could cry out of tenderness,
for this confession of yours, for this humiliation,
for this pride with which you were born and will die,
for this work that was caused by these needs of yours
that it will be offered to the needs of others,
to the eternal needs of man, an eternal commitment.
ALMOND TREES
Dazzling house, red and white,
in which room the almond trees bloomed?
I had spent time in all corners
in the red and in the unfortunate,
the tragic one, the white; my breath
fogged my dreams up on the loft
the sea shivered on your window panes
gardens, secret chrysanthemums in your ecstasy
when I ran, full of blood I the hunter
A large net spread just over my head
misery had teeth made of steel
the sun was planting different orchards
on the walls:
the orchard of the fly, of the kite
the large orchard of love
the orchard of the great fever
in which having my rifle I wandered all day long
with a red ribbon in my mouth
with a red ribbon on my hair
like the unfortunate and miserable corner
like the tragic, white corner on my rifle
I had lived in all corners
in which corner did your almond tree bloom?
Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
DAYS OF ANGER ii
II
I asked the caretaker for the key; I pushed aside the open,
dripping umbrellas in the hallway and I unlocked; the letter
was still there on the night table, twenty years later, a
woman was lighting a candle “who are you?” I asked,
“you know me well” she said to me. I shivered. I saw
the executioner through the open window. He was often
dipping his hands in water “The asshole, he’s washing
his hands” I yelled “no, he doesn’t like seeing
his ugly fingers” they told me. An old woman was sitting
at the entrance unraveling a ball of wool; for which
dream or which return? The glow of the dawning day
flooded the poor people in the street with golden hues.
PERSEPHONE (excerpt)
Sometimes
when I walk in the garden absentmindedly under
the poplars or when I clean a shirt in the stony basin
or I let my hand rest on my chest or I hold a flower
with my own girly tenderness I suddenly feel naked,
pinned on the wall or on the trunk of a tree or
in the metal entrance mirror, especially there,
in the mirror, double pinned, double seen, without
refuge, without any leaf, in a concentrated lucidity,
lighted from outside and from inside by two spotlights
of his breath which dash out of its narrow meaningful
nostrils, its oracular, sensual, religious nostrils.
Send it away, send it away
I yelled at him, fixated there, angry with a vague
guilt or innocence, I had nothing to hide, free
in my indisposition.
Only my hair flowed everywhere, getting in and
out of its nostrils like restless roots that shone
around me like wings and waves. I saw them.
They gave me back a different pride, my pride,
an independence opposite the dog and its master.
Manolis Aligizakis 