Owls
He climbed up stairs
wearing an empty saucepan
on his head he wanted to call
the muses over let them
spread benevolence and arts
to rabble but the gardenias
folded up and the finches balked
so without any followers
he stood
looking down as less and less
men remained in the plaza until
he plied his speech and rats
started dancing and the owls
who know wisdom shut
their eyes in embarrassment
SOPHIST LEAVING SYRIA
Distinguished sophist you, who are now leaving Syria
planning to write about Antioch
it is commendable to refer to Mevis in your work.
The famous Mevis who is undeniably
the handsomest young man and most loved
in all of Antioch. No other young man
leads the same life, none is paid
as much as he is. To have Mevis
only two, or three days often they give him
as much as one hundred staters.— I said, in Antioch;
but also in Alexandria, even in Rome
there is no young man as desired as Mevis.
ΑΠΝΟΙΑ
Στον πάπυρο της πεταλούδας
Η απόσταξη των τοπίων.
ΣΑΡΚΩΣΗ
Σε χάδι μωβ κυλά η Άνοιξη
Και στης καρδιάς το φύλλο
Ανεμοπύρωμα η βροχή
Βαθύ πουλί
Χώμα το χώμα
Σπόρο το σπόρο
Κραυγή την κραυγή
Καρφώνει στεφάνι.
ΑΚΟΥΩ ΤΟ ΚΡΙΘΑΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΓΗΣ
Ακούω το κριθάρι της γης
Στις καλύβες του κάμπου.
Ας πιούμε τη μοσχοβολιά μιας μέρας
Σ’ αυτό το καταφύγιο της λυχνισμένης νύστας.
ΓΥΜΝΟ ΠΟΔΙ, ΦΥΛΛΟ ΕΞΟΧΙΚΟ
Ω γυμνό πόδι, φύλλο εξοχικό,
Πώς ξεδιψάς το καλοκαίρι στο κορμί,
Σε θαλασσινό αφρό
Πουρπουρίζει το στήθος σου.
Μη μου μιλήσεις! μη σε τελειώσω.
*Από τη συλλογή “Η γραφή και το μαχαίρι” που συμπεριλαμβάνεται στο συλλογικό “Ποιήσεις 1963-2003”, εκδ. Γαβριηλίδης, Αθήνα 2004.
GYPSIES
The gypsies live next to the cemetery,
with no horses, moulded
with this soil which they don’t desire.
Funeral processions pass by their tents
the trees point to the same sky
and the creek where they meet is a rubbish dump.
What happened to the guitars
the river, the horse rider?
Something flashes, two knives, two bodies
the cop whistles — no, it’s nothing.
The gypsies have regular ID papers these days.
They talk their language around
the heating bucket every evening:
how was the day, what they bought,
what they sold and the dead
in their graves don’t understand them.
The dead speak the language of the dead
they want someone to tell their future
no one understands them.
What happened to the guitars,
the river, the horse rider?
Each of us wants something
while we speak our own language.
POEM BY IOULITA ILIOPOULOS
LONG BED
A line of baby cribs. Large windows properly shut.
Dim light. Neither my baby nor lullaby.
Only some older people whisper under the blankets
there was a ship, there was a ship that never travelled
under the mattress and in the place of a talisman
the yearning of a mother who, may still come.
To bring the hug. To bring the true home in his embrace.
LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS
Victor’s March
Among decapitated houses
resembling toothless sculls
we marched in their towns
tumbled buildings devastated
by smart bombs outsmarting
thoughtful animals
and we sang marching paeans
band played freedom songs
for the sarcastically smiling youths
who had implanted deep in their souls
the plan for revenge, youths
who in groups of three or four
planned their act of defiance
youths who had dreams
of killing us by the thousands
shoeless youths with grand dreams
that one day they’d become jihadists
Λίγο πριν την έναρξη της επίσημης χρονιάς του τίτλου της 2023 Ελευσίς Πολιτιστική Πρωτεύουσα της Ευρώπης, η πόλη της Ελευσίνας συστήνεται στο ευρύ κοινό με την Έκθεση Μυστήριο 29 | Ελευσίνα – Ωμό Μουσείο, στο Μουσείο Μπενάκη (Πειραιώς 138). Ένα εμβληματικό έργο της διοργάνωσης, στο πλαίσιο της θεματικής «Άνθρωποι – Κοινωνία», για τις ψηφίδες που συνθέτουν το φαινόμενο ΕΛΕΥΣΙΝΑ τωρινά και αλλοτινά.
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A DOG IN THE NIGHT
I don’t know the roots: the way they stir in the soil before
sprouting.
Perhaps, later on, they resemble the magnetic shadows of the branches
of an ancient garden
that stir invisibly in the moist soil, during the twilight, when
the first star
shivers in its ambivalence, polite and diaphanous as if asking for
everyone’s forgiveness.
I have often seen,
of course, exposed roots still green
and tender or totally dry — olive tree roots, cypress roots,
heath roots
and other roots of smaller plants — as if they coupled and
froze at a glance. Thus frozen, they aren’t concerned with your
glance anymore, your thought, your curiosity
nor for their ancient or current pain. Strange roots, hermetic,
serene, entwined
in a shape of agony, carelessness or neutral intensity like
those roots we once worked on and created table decors or
cute little statuettes, carefully and persistently taking advantage
of the various knots or veins of the wood or its random
branching
(we felt truly proud of these) or sometimes
we left them in their natural solid shape,
finished, frozen, indecipherable (called it, our shape)
an entwined scheme that resembled the glance of the one
observing it,
agreeing with their indisputable shape —
like a sleeping virgin or a stooped dog
or a ship hauled up from the sea floor — a dog better yet.
The Last Day
It was a cloudy day. No one could decide the wind was blowing softly
‘Not gregali cirocco’ someone said.
Some slender cypresses nailed to the slope and the sea, further,
gray with gleaming pools.
The soldiers presented arms as it started to drizzle.
‘Not gregali cirocco’ was the only decision heard.
Yet we knew that by the next dawn we would be
left with nothing, neither the woman next to us drinking sleep
nor the memory that we were once men
nothing at all by the next dawn.
‘This wind brings to mind spring’ my friend said
as she walked next to me looking afar at ‘the spring
that suddenly came in the winter near the closed sea.
How unexpectedly. Many years passed by. How are we going to die?’
A mourning march saunter around the light drizzle.
How does a man die? Strange that none has thought of it.
And to those who thought of it, it was like a memory from old chronicles
from the era of the Crusades or the naval battle of Salamis.
And yet death is something that occurs; how does a man die?
And yet each earns his own death, his own death,
that doesn’t belong to anybody else
and this game is life.
The light faded in the cloudy day, no one decided anything.
The next dawn we were left with nothing;
everything surrendered even our hands
and our women slaves at the springheads and our children
at the quarries.
My friend, as she walked by my side, sang a song totally disjointed
‘In the spring, in the summer, slaves…’
One could recall old teachers who left us orphans.
A couple went by, talking
‘I’m tired of the dusk, let us go home
let us go home and turn on our light.’
Manolis Aligizakis 