Disposition
There, face to face
with my cousin Antony
who we buried yesterday
no words spoken
just wrinkled thoughts
solitude describing meaning
of comma, ultimate right of time
and its inexorable past tense.
Suddenly Antony seemed
ready to get up from his
coffin as if he wished
to go and sit by the sidewalk.
Where else could he go?
Dead only follow
the downward path and I
finally understood that
when dealing with the dead
one, naked from the waist
down, balances on a tightrope
Excerpt
…his training at the seminary, his acceptance by the Church. Obviously His Holiness did not know the full story of this dark man from the mountains of Drumard or wherever it was he came from in the first place. Obviously His Holiness did not know from whom this same man received his education: from pagans and harlots. To have sent back to them this man from the shadow side of time and place, to have ordained him as their own new priest, the old ones regarded as an insult and an outrage. Padraig knew when he returned to the village that few of his flock had accepted him with any willingness and far less with trust. But he had proved himself in only a short time. Now all was lost. Their old suspicions had returned. They remembered. They talked. They retold stories. Some no doubt had seen him shudder or shake or stiffen or stumble and fall. They knew that Satan had come back for him. They knew that his celebration of the Mass was a sacrilege. They were affronted. Their gaze burned like hell-fire. Even the young spurned him; they spat at his passing in the street. When he stood at the altar, holding aloft the Host in celebration of the Eucharist, Padraig could feel their conspiratorial sneaking-forward down the hushed nave of the church, their long knives drawn, their white teeth gleaming like the fangs of wolves, their wild hearts pounding with the urgent wish to kill him.
Padraig no longer had his arm in a sling, but the cuts and bruises on his face had not yet completely healed, though the earlier discoloration was fading. He strode across the stone floor of the sacristy and stopped at the door, his hand outstretched but unwilling to lift the wrought-iron latch. His head ached. Satan thumped the insides of his temples, punched the backs of his eyes, drummed loudly in the whorled cavities of his ears. Padraig opened the heavy, dark door, and his arm jerked with pain. He looked out into the church. In less than two hours he must face the hostile crowd that would come to the wedding of Caitlin MacLir and Michael Carrick. The church was empty yet, except for two young altar boys who were talking earnestly in the front pew.
“Stephen,” Padraig called, steadying himself against the door post. “Stephen, come here a minute.” His voice boomed like explosions in his head.
One of the altar boys, one of Joe Carney’s sons, came forward, unsurely as the young Samuel. “Yes, Father?”
“Stephen, do you have your bicycle outside?”
“I do, Father.” The surprise that showed in Stephen’s eyes was a response either to the unexpected question or to the look of black-eyed distraction in the drawn face of the priest.
Movie Theater
We touch each other politely
we laugh, get emotional
the fugitive and his pursuer
the torturer and the tortured
the husband, the lover
just two hours in the dark
serene, unknown to each other
yet friends.
My Verses
Verses are mine, my blood, friends
they speak words and they become pieces
of my heart that I give away
like tears from my eyes which I gift you.
They reach you like saddened smiles
since I narrate my life with them
I dress them with the sun of day
to keep them like belts when I’m dead.
My verses oversee sky and earth
yet they question what is still missing
and they’re bored, withering like
sons who met their mother-sorrow.
The laughter of the smoothest tune
the passion of the flute I gift you
for them I’ve become the ruler
who has lost the love of his people.
There they flow and they fade
never to stop yet slowly they cry out:
turn your glance elsewhere, oh mortal
bring your ship, oh forgetfulness,
that they’ll sail on it.
Photosynthesis
They know their process
to transform sunrays into food
leaves and other secrets
they uphold holy:
to shelter the abandoned call
of the crow in distress
to offer rest to the migratory
bird, wings of the nightingale
left alone amid green leaves and
folded branches. It was a time
when the sun Danced before
their eyes, it was a swell time
before men with the gun barrels
appeared in the land. It was a time
of spirited wisdom floating on
branches of trees and snowy
mountain slopes filled with joy
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Excerpt
“You know why I left. An excuse is irrelevant.”
He could see she didn’t like his vocabulary, for which he had already been chastised by Sister Assunta. It’s good you know words, she had said, but you use them with too much pride. If saying what you know to be true is prideful, Rick decided he would have to continue to do it, and take his chances with God.
“You know very well that I sent you home because you were a disruptive influence. You simply cannot pay attention and it interferes with the other children.”
“I’m sorry to have to say this, Sister, but you know very well yourself that I don’t need to practise as much as the others. I can sight read and I know all the parts I have to sing by heart. And you didn’t send me anywhere, I left.”
Her face was a faded parody or horror and spiteful righteousness.
“You are a proud and sinful boy!”
“I’m just being truthful, Sister. Isn’t it very important to tell the truth?”
Rick could see that she was not willing to deal with his question. All she said was, “Well, I don’t know why you’re acting so contrary, but I just won’t have it. Now. If you are truly sorry for the way you have spoken, the Lord will forgive you.”
“Forgive me? For what?”
“For your sins.”
“What sins? Is it a sin to know how to read music?”
“Don’t get smart, young man. You know your sins. Disobedience, vanity, willful…”
He cut her off.
“Is it true that choir is a voluntary extra-curricular activity?”
Sister Rose glared suspiciously at him out of her small, pale blue eyes, their pink rimmed lids and short blond lashes flickering with confusion.
“Yes, of course, once you’ve been accepted for the privilege. But what has that got to do with anything?’
‘Just this,” he said. “I quit.
THE EXILE DIARIES
20th of December
Not a cow nor a dog in the fields;
the collar of the guard is raised;
wind blows away the fluff of everything
nothing is soft anymore.
A woman in the front step of her house
lights her heater
the wind took her place in the room
smell of coal floats
and the woman resembles a door.
If someone laughs in the wind
it’s not because of joy but of insistence;
a laughter possesses nothing
nor with the fear of possessing anything.
excerpt
She’s not a bad person. The kids from church call her fast, whatever
that means, but she’s not what they make it sound like.”
“If you say so. Anyway, you were at her graduation ceremony yesterday.
Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s not the same thing, Ronnie, and you know it. The party
tonight is at her place and it’s just for special friends.”
“Well, you’d just better forget it.” Ronnie picked up his mug and
got to his feet. “I’ve got to get to work. Morley’ll be ready to start the
cutting. And listen, Rachael, give your mom a break and don’t make
things harder for her. She has enough to worry about with Aunt
Millie being sick.”
Rachael’s look changed from one of self-pity to a worried frown.
She stood up. “Ronnie, do you think … that is … is Aunt Millie going
to make it?”
A cloud passed over his face. “I hope so, I really hope so. But only
God knows that, and all we can do is pray for her.” He put his mug in
the sink, retrieved his cap and went out.
Rachael stood for a minute longer staring at the closed door, then
she went to the phone to call Lyssa.
ͣMorley and Ronald were sitting at the kitchen table when Tyne walked
in a little before nine o’clock that evening. Both men turned quickly
to look at her. The aroma of coffee drew her eyes to the stove where a
pot hissed and bubbled an invitation. Responding to their greeting, she
bent to kiss Morley’s cheek. Sensing his intention as he started to rise,
she murmured, “Don’t get up, honey. I’ll help myself to the coffee.”
“But you look worn out, Sweetheart.”
“And you have been working all day in the fields.” She filled a mug
with coffee and sat down at the table.
Both men spoke at once. “How’s Aunt Millie?”
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REVIEW
Poetry as a Return to Origins and a Form of Resistance
By Attila Balazs
…One of the volume’s significant achievements lies in its capacity to unite seemingly incompatible registers. Mythology, philosophy, eroticism, biography, personal history, and social criticism coexist in expansive, discursive poetry that at times approaches the prose poem. The language moves from solemnity to sarcasm, from prayer to invective, and from contemplation to revolt.
Images often accumulate with torrential force. The poet does not always seek classical clarity, but rather intensity. He constructs through associations, returns, repetitions, and contrasts. Light and darkness, flesh and pneuma, humility and pride, logic and madness, life and death define one another.
Madness occupies a privileged place within this poetic system. It may represent suffering and psychological rupture, but also freedom from the logic of a diseased world. The madman possesses the right to speak the truth that rational people avoid. The poet and the philosopher stand at the margins of society precisely because they see what others refuse to see.
From here arises the ambivalence of the title Introspection. The inward gaze does not lead to withdrawal or passivity. On the contrary, the inner depths become the place from which the confrontation with the world begins. The self descends into its own viscera, into memory, desire, and the abyss, only to return to the surface with images and truths it offers to others.
Introspection thus becomes a form of responsibility. To know oneself means to know one’s roots, wounds, desires, and contradictions. It also means understanding that individual experience is not isolated, but belongs to a shared history and a common humanity.
The poetry of Manolis Aligizakis is a poetry of deliberate excess. It does not fear great words: destiny, eternity, truth, freedom, immortality, beauty. In an age in which such notions are often viewed with suspicion, the poet recovers them and restores their gravity. He still believes in art’s capacity to change the human being, defend dignity, and save something from death.
At the centre of the volume lies a paradox: the human being is mortal, yet consciousness aspires to immortality; man is fragile, yet dreams of the Overman; he is alone, yet speaks in the name of all humanity. From this contradiction arises the energy of the poems.
Introspection may be read as a symbolic autobiography, a modern epic, a philosophical meditation, or a testimony to the condition of the creator. All these readings are possible because the volume refuses to remain within a single genre or a single era.
Aligizakis constructs his own mythology from fragments of the Greek world, family memory, the experience of exile, and the great questions of European philosophy. Within this mythology, the poet is simultaneously child, lover, fighter, recluse, prophet, and martyr.
At the end of the book, the feeling remains that poetry is his true homeland. It is the place where the past may be revived, where the dead may be summoned back, where love may suspend time, and where the human being may transcend his limits for a moment.
Through creation, the poet does not definitively defeat death, but he refuses to grant it the final word. His traces remain imprinted in language, like the footsteps of his ancestors in the native soil. And the journey from Alpha to Omega does not end, but is transformed into a new beginning.
This is perhaps the true meaning of introspection for Manolis Aligizakis: not an enclosure within the self, but a descent into the depths of being to discover a light that may be brought to the surface and shared with others. A fragile and dangerous light, capable of burning, but also of guiding. A light that bears the name of poetry.
Ready to Give Birth to Forgetfulness
The zero exists and it doesn’t
eternity is in its space
distant root of the sea
realities and reflections
all the shed blood
for sanctified or sinful dreams
ecstasy of the flesh in the immensity
of life
thought that lifts and imprisons
crowding of my mind
sails, sphinxes and shipwrecks
and Eros in absentia
soul that flutters
my cosmos is always
in the cosmos
from the foggy gleam of who I am
passing memory joins me
with the ready-to-die forgetfulness
timid and at the same time a hero
from the beginning to the end
the attempt will be
her unfamiliar hand in my hand
when time unexpectedly enlivens
youth
music score that wished to love
and guide me to the wind-whipped light
will guide me to whom I was
in the fleeting footmarks
of an eternal Odyssey.
Manolis Aligizakis 