Verse
Nothing mattered anymore
the years felt heavy
upon his shoulders
and absence oversaw
from high up on its throne
the absurd descending
the smooth hill slope
and his emotions
that were rekindled
in the loneliness of the desert
where he dwelt
crafting exquisite verse
with images for the seven
stanzas of this poem
excerpt
night beyond the window. But tonight was different. Tonight the heavy, unmoving air grew stagnant; it weighed upon the room unstirred by old Finn’s gusty tales. Tonight the old sailor’s verbal gales had died to barely audible sighs.
Finn appeared to be unaware of the deepening depression that had settled over the homecoming party. His mind was on the day many years ago when he first saw Padraig: a skinny boy in short pants, writhing on the cobbles of a market square, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Never would he forget the sight. The crowd pushed back, staring in ignorance and horror at the boy’s convulsions. Two mongrel pups snapped at his legs and arms, and a sheepdog snarled and barked, its vicious teeth bared as if ready to rush in and chomp them into the boy’s neck.
“The whelp with the trousers isn’t putting up much of a fight,” someone said, and the crowd started to laugh. Ignorance and horror relaxed into mirth.
“I wonder what he’d do with a bitch in heat,” said another.
Finn waded through the crowd as through a field of barley, pushing the people aside in anger. He burst into the clearing where the boy was lying still now, his face in the muck that covered the cobbles of The Square. Finn kicked the sheepdog hard; it ran off into the crowd with a howl of pain. The pups pranced around him, yelping still, as Finn knelt down, rolled the boy over and picked him up in his arms.
“I spit on you all,” he shouted to the crowd and carried the boy away down the sloping street to where his fishing boat was tied in the harbour.
Now the Devil’s child, his own adopted son, was home again, a priest.
“I hoped to make a man of you, Padraig.” Finn was rising out of his reverie. “And I made a monk. Well, I suppose that’s not a bad accomplishment, considering what I had to work with. Come now, gentlemen, let’s not look as if we’re at a Presbyterian wake. Let’s drink. Let’s eat.” He turned towards the door that led into the kitchen. “Caitie! Jinnie! Bring us some supper. We’re half a dozen hungry men in here.”
Supper revived the company. Even Clifford forgot his headache and his queasy stomach. He enjoyed the food, the conversation, the dark red wine that everyone started drinking again in large measures. The more they drank, the more convivial they became. Only Finn MacLir seemed more subdued than usual.
“We had many more people here to welcome you last night, Padraig.” Slattery’s purple face was taking on a crimson cast like a spectacular sunset.
Train
A rattling train, full of passengers traveling
to their death passes through my mind.
Christ stands in the front wagon
and reads his metaphysical poems to them
and you who I’ve come to know and you,
who I never met, have your frightened eyes
glued on the windowpanes
and you, oh cursed world of mine,
coal, coal to be burnt in the bowels of earth.
And, high up, the night resembles
the Epitahpios cubicle.
Caribou
Mother caribou bears her calf
and two wolves call it
who will strike first
matter of balance
to seize
the newborn from her side
hordes of caribou this year
more food not much snow
scant misery what else
to do but roll the dice
repeat and charge
Let us overeat this year
famine always comes soon after
like two small peas in soup
pass by your teeth only once
Boreas
With sharpened fangs and
grasping talons
they depict Boreas,
though its benevolence
runs smoothly through your veins
as my hand under a satin blouse
follows the contour of your nipple
and the Boreas sings
for us two hiding
in the terrace loveseat
secluded from
the conspiring eyes
of the neighbour
and you said,
I enjoy the wind’s caress on my legs
as I do your fingers on my nipple
excerpt
The day before the exhibit, he helped hang the paintings;
only one in each room of the gallery. Opening night resembled a Hollywood
premier. People gathered in the street and, when a chauffeur
driven limousine drew up to the curb, the media descended. Ken parted
the crowd and opened the door, guiding the Duchess into the gallery. The
crowd inside fell back as though God himself had made an entrance.
Ken led her through the rooms, telling the stories of the Canadian
North. She nodded, smiled, listened attentively, and left as quickly as she
had come. Forty-five minutes later every painting wore a sold sticker.
Ken extended his stay, in order to accept all the invitations he was besieged
with. He had been in Madrid for six weeks, when his father called.
“You must come home right away.”
“What happened?”
“Just, come home immediately. It looks like the trust company has
gone under.”
He flew home the next day and took a cab directly to his father’s apartment,
where he found him more agitated than Ken had ever known him
to be. “This is real trouble,” he said. “We tried to get into the office and it’s
locked – the locks have been changed and nobody is there.”
In his own office, he discovered several key files missing. He arranged
a meeting with other clients of the trust company. There were rumours.
Some said the company principal had moved to the Fraser Valley, where
he had set up an Arabian horse farm and purchased a Rolls-Royce. Others
said he had simply vanished without a trace.
Ken called the RCMP commercial crime division and drove to the station
with his father. The officer explained that the department was aware
of the issue. “It’s a complicated mess,” he said. “We’re going to have to
investigate you and your activities, the same as everyone else.”
The police found many of the missing files but not a trace of the company
president and CEO. Rumours continued to circulate. One claimed
that the head of the trust company had had nothing to do with the missing
funds. It was Ken Kirkby. He was crazy, and smart, and out of the
country when disaster struck. He was the one who had masterminded the
plot. The media ran with it and reporters parked their cars and vans in
front of his house waiting for one glimpse – to take just one picture with a
telephoto lens. Two professional hockey players, convinced that Ken had
taken their money, filed a lawsuit. The judge threw it out of court. Ken
threw himself into the investigation, working with the police day after
day to piece together what had happened.
The RCMP interviewed the victims of the fraud and examined the
documents. Sorting through his own papers became a full time job, and
there were many times he gave up all hope of making sense of them.
His greater despair was the loss of his friends.
excerpt
Fixing Fence
The Circle H Ranch
Willow Springs, Montana
It was the first time that Joel rode the sorrel gelding into the
hills on its own. He had saddled up the sorrel, and instead of
leading it to the corral, Joel had sensed that both of them would
benefit from a ride in the hills.
Over the last little while, all of the horses had spent some time
in the hills, escorted by another horse and rider. Most of the
horses only needed the escort’s company a couple of times before
they were ready to explore on their own. For some reason, the
sorrel gelding was slower to settle down than some of the others;
and today would be the first time solo, just him and the rider, in
the hills.
The sorrel had seemed pretty steady to Joe. Maybe a little hesitant
to start, but after some time and some miles in the hills, the
gelding was either getting tired or had settled down. Joel wasn’t
sure which one it was, but he was enjoying the smoother ride.
The sorrel spooked a little when he had first saw them before
Joel, but as soon as Joel felt the shiver run through the horse and
up into the saddle, he knew something was up. “Probably a deer,”
he thought. But no. There were three heifers on Joel’s side of the
fence that were obviously part of the herd of several hundred on
the other side of the fence. No wonder these three wanted to
escape onto his pasture. The contrast between the lush prairie
grasslands in Joel’s pasture and the barren patch of dirt on Buck
Smith’s side of the fence was something to see.
excerpt
He sits down and looks around the office; the lieutenant catches his eye and
says, “Well, it’s as functional as any other, I suppose.”
The Admiral smiles thinking of his own office, which is very similar.
“Yes, I suppose so, lieutenant. Well, tell me what we know so far; do you have
an autopsy report?”
“Yes, it arrived a little earlier,” Bonetti gives him the written report of the
autopsy.
The Admiral reads the half-page brief and hands it back to the officer.
“It appears to be a clear-cut case, I suppose. Anything else on your mind,
lieutenant?”
“It’s strange that, when we got the phone records from the house, we
determined the widow had made a few calls when she discovered the body. The
first call was to a lover, then to the daughter, then to us third. Then to her
girlfriend.”
“To a lover? There is another man in the picture? I never expected that from
Emily. Are you sure?”
The lieutenant looks him in the eye and says, “No doubt, Admiral. She calls
him “sweetheart” and he says to her, “I’ll be there shortly.” I have seen this
scenario many times, however we cannot place him at the crime scene at the time
of death. The evidence is crystal clear, ballistics, prints, etc.”
“That means the third person has no involvement, I presume,” the Admiral
says. “Who is he, anyway?”
“A person named Talal Ahem, an Iraqi chemist, presently unemployed.”
“I have met this man, Talal Ahem. He is a friend of Hakim Mahdi,
boyfriend of the deceased’s daughter?”
“Yes, Admiral. He was the one with the limo, when I got there.”
“Yes, I know him as well. He’s the nephew of Ibrahim Mahdi, an Iraqi
billionaire, here for cancer treatment. I wouldn’t think these two boys would
have anything to do with this,” he admits to himself aloud.
“Well, it seems you know these people. Now I have something else for you,
Admiral, and this is most strange. When I conducted my examination at the
scene, I noticed signs of tears on the cheeks of the deceased; the medical
examiner confirmed it. The examiner says this man was in a blissful state of
mind when he took his own life. I find that very difficult to follow. Yet the
autopsy confirms that; as you read in the report they found traces of serotonin in
his bloodstream. On the other hand, there was plenty of adrenaline in his
bloodstream also, which means this man had been quite unhappy and angry
before coming to the state of blissfulness, as the examiner put it.”
Phemonoe
What they didn’t understand enchanted them the most,
especially if it didn’t refer to them — those general and
vague that relieved them from most of the difficulties —
those words that hid and referred to one of their locales
(barren and unknown lands),
a place of quietness and freedom.
The priestess Phemonoe
(it was said) understood the bird chirps, the water trickle,
the stirring of leaves, and after she’d drink three gulps from
the spring of Cassotis*, and after she’d sit on the high tripod,
she explained them (with inarticulate cries) and holding in
her mouth a laurel branch.
The prophets, around her, wrote
down her cries hastily. After, the decipherers explained, with
clearness and exactness, the exegesis of her words.
Until, one day,
they showed her the written exegesis of her cries, Phemonoe
couldn’t understand them “who said these?” she asked.
And when, “You” they said to her, she smiled ambiguously
and added: “Yes, but I meant something else too”
This “something else too” fifty years later (or even eons) none
of our decipherers has explained, and perhaps for this reason
the poets still continue to write with the secret suspicion that
even Phemonoe doesn’t know what that else is.
II
Eros caresses the ephebe’s heart as the Muses
sing delights to the senses and an ethereal
conscience suffuses under the citadel
of Athena, where thoughts create a man
and infinite splendor spreads over every
pleat of the insignificant, and in which
the lyre fills the air with its diaphanous
euphony. The dark blue Aegean is in consonance
with Eros when the freest mind
succumbs to the freeing poison as
the glaucous sky sheds tears and the
agile goat climbs the rocks licking the salt
of its sweat. The body is hardened like
a stone. The crest of the eastern sky
shivers from the taste of blood
as under the shining marbles
the furies unleash macabre lamentations
and the vision of an analytical mind ascends.
Manolis Aligizakis 