He walked back to the rented room and settled in his new home. It was a small room with a table, a chair, a closet for his clothes, and a single bed. The size of the room was no more than three by four meters, with paint cracks all over; some paint had peeled right off the walls. He didn’t really care about its condition. It was a very cheap room. A small window with shutters opened to the street, and Hermes saw a small garden. He took out his clothes from the suitcase and hung them with care in the closet. He, then, sat down on the bed and thought it would be a good idea to write home and let them know he had arrived and was okay, three letters to three different addresses. Realizing he had no paper, he walked out to the closest corner store, where he bought some paper, a small jar of coffee and a small rectangular box of sugar cubes, which he encountered for the first time in his life. He went back to his room and sat at the desk to write his first letter to his uncle and untie. He described in detail that his trip was very good, the city was beautiful, and he felt enthusiastic about the university. He wrote with intense feelings, particularly in the second letter, addressed to Magdalene. He signed the letters and sealed the envelopes. He would post them first thing tomorrow morning. Hunger took over him. He got up, knocked at the door of his landlady and asked where he could find a restaurant to eat something. She informed him that “Black Cat” was the closest restaurant to the house and told him how to get there. Hermes got out and walked the few blocks to the restaurant. The server brought his coffee. Hermes understood that coffee was served each time, even before an order was given to the servers. He looked at the menu, but he couldn’t understand the words; therefore, he didn’t know what to order. He had his coffee and a cigarette. The girl refilled his cup and looked at him with questioning eyes. He pointed to the menu and said, “I don’t know what these are…” his finger travelling down the list of food items. The young server asked him, “What language does he speak…” He said, “Greek,” she called him to follow her. He got up and followed the girl through a hallway to an opening that connected the restaurant to the kitchen.
…at their destination, and they should fasten their seat belts. Hermes looked down from the window. It was a cloudless night. He had a superb panoramic view of the city, full of lights flickering in the dark. He could distinguish the streets and the tall buildings as the aircraft slowly descended. They landed, and Hermes got up to take his carry-on bag from the overhead compartment, stepped off the plane, and said goodbye to Tom. An airline official led Hermes down the long hallways to the baggage area. He found his suitcase from the appropriate carousel and made his way to the arrivals area, where people waited for their friends and family members. Happy voices were everywhere; people embraced one another, kissing, laughing, and crying. He turned around as if to see someone he knew. There was no one there, he knew no one, and this was his first bitter moment of realization that he was so far away from people he loved. He wished Magda were here. He then sat on a bench and wondered aloud, “And now, where are you going, Hermes?” A question justified under the circumstances, a question he had no answer to, only the sense of loss, of abandonment, of forlornness, and fear crept into his heart. Then, as if from the great source, he felt he heard a voice that whispered to his heart, not to his ears. And it was the voice of his new motherland that said, “Welcome, Hermes, you are here in Vancouver now, go out there, find your way to do your studies and get your diploma. Your folks are waiting for you, back in Greece. They look forward to seeing you back. Your diploma is your goal and nothing less…” were the words he felt he heard, and the voice wasn’t any other but the voice of Canada, his temporary motherland, which, like a mother, took another orphan off the streets and gave him a chance. Suddenly, the fear he had just felt vanished, and a jolt of enthusiasm took over his senses. Hermes stood up. His eyes ran around the space of the large airport hall when his glance met the old woman whom he had helped in Montreal; she saw him too. At the same time, a very tall man with a good-looking woman approached…
Pip: Manolis Aligizakis has built something unusual here — a publishing project that reaches across Greek modernism, Canadian wilderness fiction, and the body's most private reckonings, all without losing the thread.
Mara: vequinox brings all of it together on this site — poetry in translation, prose fiction, landscape verse, and work that sits right at the edge of desire and survival. Let's start with the Greek poets and what exile actually costs.
Greek Poetry And Exile
Pip: The question running through these translations is what happens to a person when society decides they no longer belong — whether that exile is political, psychological, or simply the condition of seeing clearly.
Mara: Tasos Livaditis puts it with terrible precision: "Things have changed; these days, they don't kill. They only point at you with the finger; it is enough. Then, they make a circle that always becomes smaller; they slowly get closer you retreat against the wall, until in desperation you, alone, open a hole to hide in it."
Pip: So the modern machinery of exclusion doesn't need violence — the circle itself is the punishment. Shrinking space does the work that a bullet used to do.
Mara: Yannis Ritsos works the same territory across two volumes here. In the Exile Diaries poem from Volume III, a woman lighting a heater in the cold becomes the whole landscape: "the wind took her place in the room." Volume IV's "Unacceptable" shows a man who discovers some final truth and goes silent — and is convicted unanimously for that silence.
Pip: Silence as a verdict. That's a neat trick the powerful have always loved.
Mara: Antony Fostieris frames it inward — "Behind our eyes, silent and crouched, we look at the world out there like through the skylight of a prison." And Titos Patrikios, in "Movie Theater," finds a strange truce: torturer and tortured sitting together in the dark, briefly unknown to each other, briefly friends.
Pip: Two hours of cinema as the only available ceasefire.
Mara: Katerina Anghelaki Rooke's poem watches a worm destroy the September harvest and ends simply: "oh Greece, the next morning I found you changed." Kariotakis and Polydouri give us verses described as blood and heart given away like tears. And the collection "Entropy" reaches for something longer — an eternal Odyssey made of "sails, sphinxes and shipwrecks."
Mara: The review of "Introspection" calls all of this a deliberate strategy: "the inward gaze does not lead to withdrawal or passivity — the inner depths become the place from which the confrontation with the world begins."
Pip: Introspection as a launching pad, not a hiding place. That tension between turning inward and turning outward runs straight into the work on desire.
Desire, Body, And Intimacy
Pip: These pieces ask what the body wants when the world outside it has become unbearable — and whether that wanting is survival or its opposite.
Mara: "HEAR ME OUT" answers that directly. The narrator in the tub watches the water turn pink and thinks: "I was again in the same spot, wrapped in my old warmth. And the foolish people who said, 'It's too late for her, unfortunately…' What 'too late?' For me, everything was just starting."
Pip: A return to the womb framed as a beginning. That is one of the more devastating reversals in any of this material.
Mara: "Twelve Narratives of the Gypsy" places desire in a completely different register — elemental, uncontained, bodies by a river's edge "yearning for erotic apexes." "Orange" is sharper and more compressed: a "brazen thief that leads my mind to an erotic voyage." And "Ugga" strips it to the bone — breast, pen, milk, ink, the acts of suckling and writing placed in the same short breath.
Pip: Eros and language as the same bodily function. Honestly, not the worst theory of poetry.
Mara: "Chthonian Bodies" and "Wellspring of Love" pull toward tenderness and community — people sheltering each other, coffee on the stove, the small negotiations of care. The body here is less a site of crisis and more a place where ordinary life quietly insists on continuing.
Pip: From the tub to the kitchen table — and somehow both feel like resistance. The fictional lives in this work carry the same weight.
Fictional Lives And Moral Reckonings
Pip: The prose fiction here keeps returning to a single question: what do you do with a father, a priest, a painter, a spy — someone whose life demands a reckoning you are not prepared to give?
Mara: "Ken Kirkby: A Painter's Quest for Canada" opens that reckoning in the wilderness. The excerpt describes a night under the northern lights: "It was as if we were laying on the floor of a cathedral the size of the universe. The earth was no longer an issue — we weren't even part of the planet. I can see how religions began."
Pip: A man who locks himself in a studio for seven months to finish a painting after an experience like that — that's not dedication, that's a response to having seen something you can't unfold into ordinary language.
Mara: "He Rode Tall" puts a son back at his estranged father's grave on the prairie and lands on something quieter but just as large: "Joel recognized that your dad is always your dad. No matter what." The bitterness is still there; so is the prayer.
Pip: Grief and grievance occupying exactly the same space. That's the whole novel in one sentence.
Mara: "The Unquiet Land" takes the reckoning into the church. Padraig, a priest whose past the village has never accepted, stands at the sacristy door knowing the congregation at the wedding ahead of him would come "their long knives drawn, their wild teeth gleaming like the fangs of wolves." The community's memory is longer than his redemption.
Pip: A priest haunted by his own congregation. That is a specific and very old kind of loneliness.
Mara: "Small Change" gives us Rick, a boy who out-argues a nun about the nature of sin and voluntary participation, and simply quits. "The Circle" follows a spy arranging his own exit, weighing contingencies over breakfast at the Sheraton. "Fury of the Wind" slows everything down to a saddle, a jar of cream, a kiss on a cheek — Ben's first gift to Sarah, now something she intends to keep.
Pip: A saddle cream on a windowsill as the axis of a relationship. Fiction earns its keep in the small things.
Mara: "Water in the Wilderness" holds the same domestic scale — Tyne waking to sleet, the smell of coffee, a friend who took a leave of absence just to sit nearby. Loyalty measured in presence, not in words.
Pip: All of these characters are navigating what they owe each other — and the landscape outside keeps pressing in on that question.
Nature, Weather, And Landscape
Pip: The natural world in this work is never just backdrop — it watches, it judges, and occasionally it outlasts everyone in the scene.
Mara: "Vespers" makes that explicit: "Ethereal spruce stands guarding our home secrets without her armour having lonely eyes, an assuming smile between arthritic limbs as if to remind me of duties that one performs without being asked, without being paid."
Pip: A tree with arthritic limbs and a sense of duty. Nature as the only reliable volunteer.
Mara: "Mythography" follows a creek answering the river rocks — it is going to the great Ocean, to melt and become "a whiff of air pasted on an autumn day, turning to a wish in the heart of a young lover." And "Wheat Ears" brings the landscape indoors, to a graveside: a dead cousin who seems ready to rise and sit by the sidewalk, and the living person balancing on a tightrope, naked from the waist down, trying to understand what the dead require.
Pip: The creek knows where it's going. The living, considerably less so.
Mara: What holds all of this together is the idea that looking inward and looking outward are the same motion — the exile, the body, the grave on the prairie, the spruce in the yard.
Pip: Poetry as homeland. That phrase from the Introspection review keeps coming back. Next time, we find out what else this site considers home.
This was bound to be about the Poodie James story. Sonny’s face was reddening. That meant they had a problem, but Sonny ran the newsroom. She would not jump in. She reached for the pile of budget sheets on her desk and got back to work, envying the editor and reporter wrestling with a story. My god, would the price of newsprint ever stabilize? She sank into the pages of figures, enjoying the whir and the rhythm as she cranked the handle of the adding machine. “Got a minute?” Winifred looked up at Sonny standing in her doorway, with Pease a step behind him. “Ned has something you ought to know about.” She pushed the budget aside. “Well, Ned,” she said after she had heard Pease’s story, “nice work, I must say. Poor George Pearson, carrying that around all these years. But we can’t go with it. Sonny is right, it’s hearsay. The hobo, Clarkson, thinks he saw Torgerson that night. You say Clarkson told you Torgerson denied it. This certainly could explain the mayor’s hatred of Poodie James, but we need the other man to confirm Pearson’s story. Even then, Torgerson may not confess. Have you gone back to Pearson to try to get the name?” “Yes. He’s terrified,” Pease said. He won’t tell me any more. I think he has visions of prison. He probably doesn’t know the statute of limitations on assault.“ “More likely he has visions of his reputation and his business going to hell,” Sonny said. “And he has a point.” “I don’t know any other way to find out who was with Torgerson and Pearson that night,” Pease said. Winifred straightened up and fixed her gaze on the middle distance. “I think I might,” she said after a few seconds. She pulled a scrap of paper from a desk drawer, reached for the telephone, propped the handset on her shoulder, started dialing and shooed the men out of her office. They watched from Sonny’s desk. After she hung up, she waved them back in. “Ned,” she said, “you’re about to meet your first madam.” She gave him a look of appraisal. “I hope she’s your first.”
A widower, Dwayne Levine was the recipient of a disabled worker’s pension. Those who had observed him flinging heavy engine parts around his yard or stumbling home from the Kingsway Pub most nights viewed with suspicion his claim of an irreparable lower disc. Few car club members knew—as my pal O’Donnell did, living across the alley from Ed’s garage—that Mr. Levine routinely took the Dodge out after midnight. He also disappeared with it on those occasions when a member was ill and the car at rest. He was something of a philanthropist with the housewives, Mr. Levine was, often loitering in the Shop Eazy parking lot offering free deliveries. – Boys everywhere love two things, Dwayne Levine philosophized: girls and cars. His sobs had been reduced to a snivel with a second complimentary wedge of pie. – If we had what these young fellas have today, he said, the war never would have happened! Back on patrol, Mahoney aired another possibility. – I say the club’s a front for some kind of gangland activity. Maybe one of us should go undercover. Whaddya think? – Spit it all out, Mahoney! barked the senior policeman. The Huns are scaling the walls! – One of us — me, I guess — could pose as a potential buyer. I could ask to see the vehicle up close. Maybe get inside the garage without a search warrant. The sergeant feared for the future knowing the likes of Mahoney represented the next generation of law enforcement, although he agreed the need for a search warrant was the most damaging invention since the right to silence. – People in this part of town, McManus reminded his young partner, distrust strangers with crewcuts and the physique of a footballer. Besides, he added, perhaps you hadn’t noticed? The Dodge isn’t for sale! McManus allowed himself a moment to despair. – An Indian shaman said the Creator gave us two eyes, two ears and one mouth, Mahoney. He reminds you of this so that you might observe and listen twice as much as you talk.
– I guess we better get going, I said. We don’t wanna miss our rendezvous. Burt didn’t budge. Finally he said, Ain’t gonna be no rendezvous. He loosened the flaps of his pack and spilled its contents. River rock. I dumped mine — the same. – What’s going on, Burt? – Ain’t no satellite receiver, little brother. Those two buggered off long ago. And look, he said, fingering the napkin map and peering over the edge into the ravine. They were hoping we’d have ourselves a little accident. – But this cable! And the TV store! Burt chuckled. The van was leased, he said. The TV store was rented by the month. I still wasn’t convinced. – I was checking on my stash one night when I overheard the two of them talking. It was all Swanson’s idea. He’s done this before. Bud’s his stooge. – And? – I told the cops everything. Those two are probably in cuffs by now. Burt removed a nylon bag from his pack. – Open it, he said. It was stuffed with paper money, and plenty of it. – Explain, Burt . . . – While Bud was trying to find mine, I was looking for his. A couple of times we almost bumped into each other. With a little help from a friend, I found his first. All the share money, his cut of the TV sales. My brother separated the money into three piles and pointed to the tallest. The bills were stacked like a column of Chinese characters. – I figure we’d turn this in, he said. It belongs to Aunt Peggy and the others. But this one—he stuffed the second pile into the pack— is ours. After all, folks have their TVs. – And the third? – That’s for cousin Mark. A reward. He’s the one found a couple of Bud’s chewed-up toothpicks down by the river and suggested we start digging.
“I’m glad to see you’re not hiding, Mr. Clarkson,” Pease said. Fred hoisted himself up on an elbow and regarded the young man. “Not hiding and still not talking about myself,” he said. “I thought perhaps you’d be willing to confirm what I found out about your background before we go with the story. It was fairly simple to trace you through the state bar association. You had an impressive career in the law.” “Now, why would anyone care about that, Mr. Pease? It’s ancient history.” “I suppose no one would care if you hadn’t made yourself a hero in the train rescue and come so eloquently to the defense of Poodie James at the council hearing.” Engine Fred indicated the captain’s chair. “Have a seat. I’ve been thinking of something that might interest your readers far more than anything you could write about this old hobo. Want to hear about it?” “Do I sense the offer of a deal?” Pease said. Fred’s eyebrows went up. “Does that offend your journalistic sensibilities?” “It depends on the nature of the deal and the quality of the information,” Pease said. Fred fell silent while he studied Pease’s schoolboy face, its earnestness, its shock of hair over the forehead, the glasses losing their struggle to stay in place. Pease returned his gaze without moving his eyes, without a flicker of expression. “Do you know the story of Poodie James being attacked and beaten shortly after he moved to this valley?” Fred said. “As of two days ago, I do,” Pease told him. “Winifred Stone told me about it shortly before the council hearing. She directed me to the clipping in our morgue. Sketchy story. Not much to go on. It’s interesting that someone was attacking hobos around the same time. 1927, a long time ago.” “Matter of perspective,” Engine Fred said. “Seems like yesterday. Still, it’s been sketchy for me, too, until recently.” Pease looked at Fred, saying nothing, waiting.
Every couple of days Swanson visited Aunt Peggy’s. He and Bud held court at the kitchen table. They fell silent if any of us came too close. Most evenings Burt retreated to a spot on the river and helped Mark with his knots. A fear of cougars prevented me from joining them. One night Swanson and Bud asked to talk with us. They waited until our cousin was asleep. – We’re gonna hook up the receiver on Sunday, Bud said. – What of it? Burt said. We’ve got a TV back home. – We’ll need assistants. – Paying top dollar, Bud said. Up to it? – Why tell us? Burt sparred. We’re students. On vacation. –We’ve had dozens of applications, Swanson said.He removed his cowboy hat. There was a wart above one eye looked like a ladybug. – We don’t know nothing about receivers, I said. We don’t even know what one looks like. – You boys ever heard of the Sherpas? Swanson asked. They help climbers in the Himalayas. – Think it over, boys, Bud said. It’s a great opportunity. After Swanson had left, our aunt scouring dishes, Bud leaned into Burt and said, Jails are full of punks like you. He slid a fresh toothpick into his cheek, then quickly removed it again. – One night changes their whole outlook. Get my meaning? – I was 14. I didn’t. Burt wedged one of Bud’s toothpicks between his lips. – That the reason, Uncle Bud, you walk like a girl? Pork Chop Hill seemed considerably steeper standing in a pasture at its base than it did from downtown Coppermine. Its flanks were dressed in dense old growth, the highest point smothered in cloud. A hundred people must have turned up to see us off. A photographer from the Gazette snapped photos; the school band did its best. Flatulent cows grazed lazily amongst the muddy pickups. Swanson reiterated our tasks. He and Bud, carrying sensitive…
“There’s no mistaking it, Mr. Mayor. I saw your face for fully half a minute before you bucked me off and made your escape. I have never forgotten your eyes, your distinctive eyes. I thought I recognized you from the back of the hall when you spoke, but I had to be certain. You know, indeed you know, what I’m talking about.” Torgerson glared across his desk at Engine Fred. “You expect people to believe something dredged up from twenty years ago?” Fred smiled. “I didn’t say how long ago it was, but your memory is fairly accurate. It has been twenty-one years. Poodie James and I were discussing it just this morning. As for people believing it, I hope that it won’t be necessary for anyone to know. That includes Poodie.” “What do you mean?” Torgerson said. “Poodie doesn’t know who beat him up. He doesn’t know who attacked Old Sam, and he doesn’t know, as he puts it so simply, why you don’t like him.” Glowering at Engine Fred, Torgerson said, “I could have you thrown out of here.” “Yes, you could.” Torgerson got up, turned around and stood looking at cars passing on the street below. “What do you want?” “I don’t know why you beat Poodie James when you were a young man. I don’t know why you are persecuting him now. It doesn’t matter. I want you to leave him alone, Mr. Torgerson. Just leave him alone.” Torgerson spun around and leaned across the desk. “I’ll tell you why, mister. Because he’s a freak, an unclean little freak. He contaminates the town. He should have left after he got his warning, but he stayed here, dragging that wagon around, rummaging through peoples’ garbage, bothering children. All those things you said in the hearing, all those things Gritzinger said, that’s crap. Poodie James is nothing but a bum and a beggar. He’s bad for the town.”
Everybody in the coffee shop gathered around him, even the mayor. Demetre kicked his nephew’s foot to quieten him. He knew that some people do not like to hear about change, especially in the current political situation, where even the slightest change can trigger a nationwide negative reaction from the politicians. However, young Hermes didn’t want to lower the tone of his voice now that he had their attention, because he wanted to teach these people some ideas which might inspire them to fight against the system. “Hey, Yanni, your father was looking for you,” someone yelled from the open door, interrupting the whole conversation. “Foti, get us another round of brandies,” Gerry yelled at the proprietor, who nodded his head. Hermes continued to explain to them that they could find a good lawyer, who would write the rules of the co-op, elect a governing body, and do whatever was necessary to start looking after themselves and not just rely on the existing system to help them. He referred to many examples from ancient days to today, trying to connect them to their original roots. They listened. Some villagers raised their eyebrows, others nodded their agreement, and others simply carried on with their entertainment without paying attention to the fired-up young Hermes. The villager sitting next to Hermes was still not convinced: “You think that an association like that is going to do a better job for us?” “Yes, definitely. Listen to this: when I go to Athens, I’ll find you a good lawyer, then I’ll make sure before I go away, he gets in touch with you guys, and you take it from there.” Demetre gave him the signal to stop, as he was worried about what the mayor was thinking about all this and what notes he reserved in his mind as to who this information could be useful. Hermes didn’t listen to his uncle and continued to tell the villagers how to form the co-op and what their rights were. “But what you are telling us to do, Hermes, is nothing more than a communist idea, isn’t it?” the mayor butted in.
