POEM BY NANOS VALAORITIS

I’M TIRED OF LOVING YOU

I want them to auction me

I want them to put me in jail

I want to be like Sunday

when all of us eat a sweet

I want to become a goldsmith

to cover you in gold dust

I want us to go to America

to meet with Mr. Croesus

I want to travel to India

to get burnt into a deathly pyre

chanting a Buddhist sutra

to throw my bones into the Ganges

I want to travel up the Amazon

against the current — to be eaten

by a flesh eating tropical plant

chanting a magical chant

I want to look deep into your eyes

to beg you to stop

and to be bathed for the second time

in the Niagara waterfall

I want to compete with the shadow

that always follows you

I want to sail with white sails

to Europe with the unions

I want to ascend to heaven

not to think of you ever again

to sit next to the Archangel

and we both read cheap romance magazines

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Breath of the Sea

It was a hot high noon. The window shutters were closed.

If the water was cool, everyone thought,

if we were naked, if the boat with its wet rope, with

strong arms on the oars, passed along the hallway

the sea breath would had already freshened them 

to the edges of their ears. They undressed at once.

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Sadness

He took his place among us

and locking eyes

he said: I have nothing but

a small blue window

on the bay where sheer fancy

grabs moonlit waves

star bursts laughter while

you have nothing that I want

I ferret to escape

it prods me to the exits

to the gate to chase down

crave during those days

that last twelve hours

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Summer Solstice

3

And yet in this kind of sleep

the dream so easily turns

into a nightmare.

Like the fish that shone under the waves

and buried itself in the mud of the seafloor

or the chameleon when it changes color.

In the city that turned into a brothel

pimps and harlots

sell rotten charms;

the kore who came from the sea

wears the cow’s hide

to be mounted by the young bull;

the poet

ruffians throw dirt on him

as he sees the statues dripping blood.

You have to escape this sleep;

this whipped skin.

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DEVIL WITH A CANDLESTICK

Sometime while I talk I suddenly start laughing

uncontrollably because I died at twelve years of age.

I remember details, the funeral service, father was

drinking a lot, mother was crying, my older brother

           had gone to the movies

and I, wretched in my coffin, was thinking the evening

           family meeting

and the daring position they had found me with my

           cousin.

For this, I’m saying to you, it’d be perfect if one,

during a night, was able to lift all forgetfulness off

the poor hats and survived eating gauzes in old train

stations only to make an armchair for the leftover apples

or to cry so much that the grandfather’s clock would

            ring again

and tell to all our friends that all who don’t remember

eternity they’ve truly lost it.

Now, the hanged people go up riding the elevator,

           no one notices them,

the old woman is fishing in her lentils for all the old

          drowned men and sometime a delayed one,

at night, sees our titles written on the skin

of the killed dog.

However, Pilot, upon seeing that it was of no use and

everything was just noise, he stopped the ceremony;

they say that during the same night the parish women

          gave birth to small wax semblances

and father, once merchant, after he lost all we had, stood

          outside the stores and

one night I saw him stooped over the garbage “father what

are you doing there?”

“I’m looking for that old cigar”, he said.

Next morning we put him in the Asylum, with a box

of cigars that I managed to buy with some borrowed

            money.

Since then I know a lot about parent killers. And I

            gave up smoking.

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Dead End

In the fall we heard horns of the ancient hunters
blare from under the arches The dowser
sat by the door
In front of Government House they burned kites Farther on
the statue was alone naked completely shivering on its pedestal
(the one that had endured so much to become a statue)
now totally forgotten secretly contemplated in the rock
a new amazing straddle that would draw
the hunters’ attention the butcher’s baker’s widow’s
disproving what he’d dreamed of the most: his unblemished
his glorified his made-of-marble comfortably crucified
motionlessness

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New Safeguards

Silent mornings as the leaves fall, a pause

under the perforated domes of trees,

deep pause of the roots in the soil. Two old men

sit on the bench; they stare at their hands. A woman

gathers fruit from the low branches, the other

woman disappears on the treetop. Later on

the sun strikes its pan on the garden railings;

then the women come down from the trees,

shake off their dresses, get inside the houses,

tidy the rooms, make the beds;

they hold the big despotic guarding brooms

which remind us that we have to always protect

ourselves from something.   

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Poem by Nanos Valaoritis

THE RIDDLE

The root of a tree consumes my shape

a stone pricks my finger

and skins my brain

my eyes become prey of the leaves

owls hide behind my eyelids

my steps self-delete, stay still

become mouths among the memorial shrubs

a butterfly sucks all of my being

sparks and smoke come out of my nostrils

like the dragons who were corals in ancient times

like the thistle among the grass blades

wind whirls forget of me and deny me

flowers stick their tongues out to me

terraces walk over me

I hate the springs and I trade their wishes

I’m the favored of the waves like the pebbles

I refuse to retreat opposite the wind

to melt in the furnaces of heated baths

to burn on charcoal like a crab

to make superhuman efforts to talk

to save myself

from the conflagration I alone started

I shine like a diamond but I’m not a star

who am I then if I’m not who I am

a heavenly or earthly body, massive, fluid or airy?

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