Prophet His prophetic pneuma, his sense of eternal freedom, the endlessly creative mind of the giant who stood before a catastrophe and saw decaying humanity. He sensed that a future benevolence appeared before his eyes, before his prophetic vision, while he had his eyes closed. He saw the new race of men and women who stood opposite the morality of humbleness and against the well-fed bellies of priests and deacons, and he saw the creators of immortal boys and girls. This was his epiphany and his fate: life played like a drama, like a historical stage show of the pneuma with its delirium and tragedy, with a catharsis from the first moment, he realized that it was his freedom to think and to create his immortal Übermensch
NINE Finn MacLir lay in a plain wooden box in the dark, still winter of death. He wore his navy-blue fisherman’s jersey and trousers and his best black boots. Harry and Ted Robinson, the undertakers from Lisnaglass, had laid out the body and, with Michael’s help, had carried the heavy coffin down the stairs. It stood for three days on trestles in the sitting room where the sofas and chairs had been pushed aside to make room for it. Mother Ross and Finn’s twin daughters had held vigil over the corpse, with Finn’s closest friends in attendance. It was a quiet, solemn wake for one renowned—and excoriated—for his regular parties. Now the coffin lay on two ropes beside the open grave where the two Robinsons and two of their assistants stood silently, heads bowed respectfully, hands clasped in front of them. Around the grave men stood in sombre suits and black ties, hats in their hands, their tanned faces clean and almost shining, like those of boys going to Sunday school. Some spoke to neighbours in hushed, reverent tones. A cool breeze blew in from the sea, shivering the short grass of the old graveyard behind the ruins of Killyshannagh church where sheep grazed unconcerned at a distance from the men assembled around the grave. A polished granite headstone bore the graved inscription, Roisin MacLir, neé Corrigan, 1858-1892. Finn’s name would be added later. Dressed in a black suit with a knotted black tie, Clifford Hamilton stepped forward. “I have the duty and the honour of saying a few words about the man lying in death before us.” He glanced around at the faces of the forty or fifty men standing in front of him. He felt that the unfortunate Padraig, Finn’s adopted son, should have been here, making this farewell speech to his earthly father. Or Seamus Slattery or Ignatius Sweeney who had known Finn for so many years. Or the more experienced, respected Dr Starkey. “I say ‘honour’,” he continued reluctantly, “without hesitation or qualification. Because Finn MacLir was one of the greatest men it has been my honour to have known. He was a close friend of my father and my father’s family, but he was a friend of rich and poor. Whether a man was a lawyer, a banker, a farmer, or a fisherman made no difference to Finn.
“Here, we can hear God’s voice in the tree tops, in the rippling waters, in the cry of the loon. Until you can lower yourself to our level and treat us as equals, there’ll be very little dialogue.” Father Finten fled to walk alone in the woods. Now Ailan came to find him there. He had heard the conversation with Keallach and decided this was the best opportunity to confirm what Keallach had already said about the relationship between priest and Brothers. “I have been wanting to talk to you, man to man, not as penitent to confessor, for a very long time, ever since we first came to these shores. You are a hard man to talk to. I do not want your judgments and I do not need your approval. I want your trust and your love. You call me Brother but what does that really mean to you? Am I like your own flesh and blood, or are you just being a distant father? Because you are older than I, does not mean I should call you Father. Show me real love, and I’ll gladly do so.” Now Finten felt totally lost. He was unable to speak the thoughts that raced through his mind. Ready to explode with grief and outrage, he turned and walked quickly until he was deep in the forest. He needed time to think. Finten did not return for the evening meal, not for prayers or bed, but stayed away all night. Trusting that their priest would come back when he’d had time to think these conversations over, the Brothers decided to overlook his absence. When Finten did return to camp after three days, he did not say anything about what had happened. The Brothers respected his silence, waiting to see if there’d be a difference in their relationship with him, and life went on as before.
Message on the cellphone Although the time it was sent was clear and the confirmation the message on the cellphone never came through. It was the right sender the right recipient. But the message you sent me a single word I simply never got. Why this one got lost and not any other, the one with the pointless goodbye: ‘I’m leaving you before you leave me’ or all other messages we’ve sent to each other, due to a mistake of the mirror, the ones we received back totally refracted, we’ll never know. What black crucible devoured the words? Are they so dirty after all? And I think of that hairy man who some years ago extended his hand and softly caressed that woman who met him for the first time and with that caress suddenly the world of that era changed. We’ve never learned of those words.
Founded Love Th e two of us roots of the oak wings of the eagle until the next time we shall meet inexplicably joined at the base and in the sky calligraphic grace of chronos encompasses the meaning of the oneness that fills the net of life over the substratum and inside it glory to the dangerous voyage as is called by all who don’t dare fall in love
He stopped abruptly as a male voice from amongst a group of men near the door hailed him. Looking decidedly relieved, he excused himself to Sarah and hurried away. She stood in the middle of the room, unaware of the people moving around her. The day was not going at all as she expected. She wished she hadn’t come. Perhaps Ben had been smart, after all, to stay at home. Whatever he had done to alienate the people of Nimkus had obviously cut deeply. But she could not understand why they should take it out on her. She became aware of people staring at her so she walked away, and eventually made her way outside to the fair grounds. No one, except a little oriental-looking man, spoke to her. Struggling to manoeuvre a table through the door into the agricultural hall, he flashed Sarah a huge smile. “How do, missy.” Sarah vaguely remembered the sign on a shack at the end of the main street, declaring the presence of Pong’s Laundry. She felt the urge to run after the man whom she knew must be Pong, and offer to help him with the table. After all, apart from Will, no one else had shown any friendliness towards her this morning. With nothing better to do she decided to go back to the livestock area and watch Dave show his animals. Picking her way through the people gathered on the fairgrounds, she noticed a group at the grandstand near the ball diamond. She walked over to have a look. Young men, some in their late teens and others a little older, had already begun a game of baseball. They wore no uniforms, and the few baseball caps amongst them did not display any team logo so Sarah could not tell which districts they represented. A man leaning on the end of a bleacher seat smiled and moved aside to let her get a better look. Sarah, interpreting his move as a friendly gesture, dared to speak to him. “Can you tell me what teams are playing?” “Colson and Ryerson districts,” he said, turning to look at her. “You not from round here then?” “Yes, I live in the Colson district, but I haven’t been there long. I doubt if I’d know anyone on the team. Are they the ones at bat now?” “No, the ones in the field. They have a pretty fair team…
Mirror by the Entrance The wealthy house had in its entryway a huge, quite old mirror, bought at least eighty years ago. A very handsome young man, a tailor’s employee, (on Sundays an amateur athlete) stood there holding a parcel. He gave it to a member of the household, who went inside to get a receipt. The tailor’s employee was left alone and waited. He went close to the mirror and had a look at himself, and he adjusted his tie. Five minutes later, they brought him the receipt. He took it and left. But the old mirror that had seen and seen, during its long years of life, thousands of things and faces, the old mirror rejoiced now, and felt proud that it had received that gorgeous beauty for a few minutes.
The events that followed his revolutionary ardour and all the changes that took place, most importantly the decay of human values and the spread of consumerism, didn’t stop him from overcoming his personal trials and becoming the expression of his era. Thus, he opened a passage toward the future light using his past experiences, the lost vision and his infinite nostalgia, and he reached his apex in his latest books where he enclosed all he had planned to reveal in verse: And perhaps this is the unsaid: as if someone close to your cries, one you’ll never see, nor will he ever meet you. But at night, when you both come back together, you Open the door to the old room. I was so afraid that when they took something From me, I felt grateful They at least left me with their memory. Livaditis’ poetry is alive, as is the memory of him. It is poetry open to the populace, addressed to those who walk toward new eras, to those who at least can grasp his warning: Ah, life! A stranger’s hat we put on hastily in the panic of the bombing. ~ Spiros Katsimis
…thinking of going hunting tomorrow. Is there anything around here we may find?” “You are going hunting without a permit?” George asked. “That is right; we’ll arrange it. Do you have the guns?” Demetre insisted. “Yes, you can have mine, and my son has his, which his mother has kept hidden for a long time.” Hermes was surprised. “You know your mother; she wouldn’t let me touch her son’s stuff.” Despina, by now, had already set the table with her best linen. She served the food in her best dishes. They all ate with a good appetite and drank to Hermes’ success. After a few glasses of wine, his father began to speak more freely, and they had a very pleasant evening.
They were marvelling at the line of diminutive Inuksuit that curved along the water’s edge toward a far-off boulder that seemed to reach almost fifty feet into the sky. The Inuksuit told a story, Ken said, and after a lunch of fresh fried fish he led them toward the boulder. As they walked the boulder diminished in size until they stood beside it and found it was about three feet tall, pink, perfectly smooth, and resting on top of an immense gray rock that had been partially heaved out of the tundra. “This is a fishing Inukshuk,” he told them. “It tells you that this is a good place to go fishing. How does it say that? If the fishing is good, the Inuit take a stone out of the water and put it on top of another stone with little Inuksuit leading the way. A passerby who had never been in this land would know immediately that he could catch fish here. Other configurations of stone describe what kind of fish are here. Essentially, this is a language.” He explained that the permafrost lurks just under the surface of the tundra, and below that lay thousands of feet of ice. The ground above the permafrost where the ice melted consisted almost entirely of rich humus built up over eons by the tiny plants that grew and died there. An eightinch tree takes hundreds of years to grow to that height in the Arctic’s short season. The fibres of the humus stretched out along the surface and down to the permafrost, siphoning the water from the ice and sending it into the atmosphere. As the wind travelled across the surface of the land in buffeting gusts, it created rudimentary magnifying lenses of the millions of tiny water bubbles streaming into the air. The farther away you were from an object the more lenses you were looking through and the larger the distant object appeared. That night after supper he walked down to the dock with a fly-fishing rod. Arctic grayling congregated in the shallows here and after a few causal casts, he landed a fine three-pound fish. As he unhooked it and slipped it back into the water he noticed Karen sitting on an overturned bucket at the far end of the dock. “I’d like to try that,” she said. He handed her the rod and described the process but even after all these years he still had no idea how to explain that it was a line with no weight and it needed to fly guided by minimal strength and energy, and perfect timing. She cast a couple of times and smiled. “I like this,” she said and while the fly lay on the water, a large grayling took the bait. Ken disengaged it, gave the rod back to her and left her to sort out the tangles and continue casting. He sat on the overturned bucket at the far end of the dock and watched.
Manolis Aligizakis 