POEM BY CHLOE KOUTSOUBELIS

THE TICKET

I purchased a train ticket

to come and find you.

So simple to get onto a train

with the operator, the money collector, other passengers

rails touching the ground

and all stops pre-announced.

I forgot how black the train of love is.

It burns coal and every hope

with a blind eye and a gaping mouth

an orchid engine forever hungry

it groans rhythmically

like a gigantic serpent

in and out the fearful tunnels. 

I forgot how lonely the train of love is.

The inspector often

validates the tickets

and the money collector

a wax resemblance

always waiting at the station.

I purchased a train ticket

to come and find you.

As if I didn’t know the voyage is always the same

and who to look for in the deserted station.

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Betrayal

He stood silently next to her.

She cried for the somber hour

lingering indecisively

like the ache she felt for

the unknown lurking behind

her sealed door

like the question in her tongue

refusing to pop out

although she knew well

from the pain in her heart

he had betrayed his vow

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SYLLABLES

And what has remained of your passing

time slowly smooths

like a pebble in the river.

I’m only certain of your name now.

And I always repeat it in front of the sea

that perhaps one night,

when the barbwire and stones choke us,

I might use it as a word of salvation

and suddenly I discover

that even that has vanished.

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I WANT TO LEAVE

I want to leave this place, to go far away

I want to become golden dust in the air

simple element, free, brave

to an unfamiliar new land I’ll go

where things of the world will appear

like dreams and they’ll talk to the soul

where the nice faces of people will smile

and where I too shall be beautiful

where, my god, darkness wouldn’t exist

in the night, nor in the despair of the place

upon the horrible skyline or in the wind’s wailing

nor in the glances or words of people

where there won’t remain anything

but a little joy and satisfaction

where all will say that they have left forever

that perhaps they are all already dead.

‘Karyotakis-Polydouri: The Tragic Love Story’ poetry translated by Manolis Aligizakis

Bird

A bird on the tree, a short chirps, a second chirp

that ties the white spring apron around its waist;

turning its head it looks carefully, looks happy

and suddenly it dives into the light-blue, vanishes

              in its song.

Where are you looking at? Do you still see it? Show it

              to me.

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Poem by George Theoharis

A FEW DETAILS FROM THE NORMAL LIFE

AND THE DEATH OF MRS IRENE KARVONIS

She let her last breath in bed at the end of the century. During her last year of her life her memory gradually left her leading her to the starting point. She became again the little girl who she always was. She shrank into a handful of a person due to the absence of the fluids of robustness dressed in her freshly washed nightie, she was happy for a sprig of basil you would offer her or by giving her the chance to narrate incoherent stories.

She let her last breath having reached her ninety-three years. Just before she died she turned and said to her son who was by her side “I was born in Syros in 1906. I remember the day Halley’s Comet pass by the Earth. We had peas and small fried fish. They were forcing me to eat, but I wanted to see the comet, dad.”

When she closed her eyes and with the commotion that was created among the relatives who waited for her, her not yet forty days old grandchild started crying.

And if this story seems a bit melodramatic and if the question arises “for what reason a normal life deserves its place in art?” I wonder: “why the normal life of the kind Mrs. Irene Karvonis doesn’t deserve it, when among other things, she managed to finally answer the merciless question of “what shall we cook today?”

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