Sotirios Pastakas, Learning to Breathe (translated from the greek by Yiannis Goumas)

NOCTURNAL READINESS

Dreams of abandoned order keep me company
each night. The unfinished novel
of married life, the endless harping
on the same thing, passion and its painful
consequences: ready now, and in all concience,
I must settle old scores,
get my own back, even though the digit clock
shows only 3.43: the present, I say, is
an illusion of a well-arranged past.
And yet, when I get up to sever
with my word the sinister plot, I wear
my slippers back to front, and the last few
drops always fall outside the bowl.

PERHAPS ANOTHER TIME

Next time we meet,
my tone of voice will fully
obey my words.
I’ll have mastered my misgivings,
the fickle face of confusion.
The topics of discussion will sacrifice
themselves without bloodshed,
and I the perfect mimic of others’
voices. The idioms
and oddities of verbal intercourse,
the tics and trics and traits
of the world around
will calmy flow inside me.
In talk thus embodied,
an outsider no more,
no longer out of place and time.

LUMINOUS SOLIDARITY

A 40-watt lamp is burning in my room.
A captive inside its pale circle,
I pass my evenings: reading
and writing, dauds and scratchings,
an entire volume of discarded
foolscap. And Trikoupi Street
gradually grows quiet-only around two or three
the occasional roar of a motor
forces a passage. I count again and again,
the lights still on in the tenements
around, certain that someone else
finds comfort in counting
mine. Yet I must hasten,
write what I can, whatever I’ve time for,
before it goes out, the final light
that keeps me awake.

WHAT HAS COME TO PASS

There will be no resume’ of what has come to pass.
As they make their way out
and shadows take them in their fold,
of a conversation lost forever,
words of a warm afternoon, he will retain
the slight shiver, the quiet anxiety,
a moment of uncertainty alone, when,
feeling a gentle touch on his shoulder, “well, goodbye,”

he said, “I’ ll wait for a while in the garden”.

FAREWELL PRESENT

This decanter was brougth by Kostas
from the other side of town. The day
was wet, and he clasped it to his breast,
inside his jacket, and finally he took a taxi
lest someone jostled him and it broke.
Of an unparalleled friendship the most base
of endings, it would seem later,
though none of us could have suspected it,
not even he, himself, I imagine,
as he stood at the head of the stairs and said goodbye,
a bit of cellotape from the makeshift
wrapping stuck between the middle and ring fingers
on his left hand.

LARISSA GENERAL HOSPITAL

How could Alexander Fleming spend the night
among so many camp beds lining the corridors,
so many death rattles and relatives
dozing by the bedside of their nearest
and dearest, having already come to terms
with the inevitable. Death
is but a blinding flare. You can
neither budge nor hide nor run
away. Thus radiant and motionless,
time sprinkles you with marble dust,
and in the morning delivers you, a handsome statue-
as was the case, I fear, whith the aforesaid gent.

ACADEMY SRTEET
to Michalis Ghanas

As he walked down Academy Street, he didn’t feel
the yellow acacia floret that came
and settled in his hair. He didn’t realize
that people stepped aside for him to pass,
his way clear-green, too,
the next pedestrian light. He was unaware
of a host of erotic glances,
of smiles never returned, of faces
warmly beckoning with optimism,
confidence, and kindness. Only when
he entered the lift did he blush with shame,
as he saw in the mirror the yellow floret
caught on his tie; and he smiled,
he, Tuesday’s honoured guest,

invested with the order of everydayness.

THE FULLNESS OF TIME

The year slants towards its end.
Yet again, they bend and yield
who stood against it. Gently they lean
to one side with the uniform
grace of a twig that sees nothing
but simply shows the way of the wind,
bare of the florid ramifications
of direction, as the pine tree in the square
sways with the northern wind, as I fall asleep,
my face to the wall.

SUNDAY POEM

He spends all morning discovering, inventing
dust. Then, come eleven thirty, on Sunday,
he sits and lights a sigarette,
the smell of boiled beef prevailing
overall. Who loves
tidiness never rests. Imminent
is the threat of chaos, temporary always
the household chores-even the flowerpots
demand undivided
attention. Really, when do flowers
grow? At night? Flowers,
he reflects, flower in homes
full of love; but how is one
to bear such efflorescence
in the absence of it?

SALO’

The waters of the lake relate
nothing. Having no outlet,
they lie tranquil from shore to shore.
A perfect place of anonymous beauty
to rid oneself of the past
once for all. Standing at
the window of our one and only
night’s stay, I alone see
the bald-headed man in a black shirt
rowing happily as though the water
level never rose-yes, never
rose, inch by inch, covering
everything. I shan’t say a word.
Even if they know all there is to know about him.
If I don’t mention him, will it be that
he never existed for either of us?

PORTRAIT OF THE POET NEARING FORTY

As he neared forty, two things occurred:
a first marriage and a second poetry collection.
A simple act of saving, maturity-
who said it? Having squandered all he had,
now, from his new penthouse,
erect amid a circle of friends, wearing a white
linen suit and an old-fashioned straw hat
with a black ribbon, he raises his glass
to his guests. Let us eavesdrop:

“Plainly speaking, my dear fellow-poets,
poetry will not deliver us from present
mistakes. It aids and abets us
that we may repeat them, thoroughly
revised, in a third poetry collection
and a second marriage.”

ANNIVERSARY

The album of photos
never taken I leafed through
again tonight. Aspects of movement
never realized, minced words
and innuendoes, rounded gestures,
and the slightest sin incandescent
in defiance of possible repentance;
and faces all the more radiant
despite the fleeting years, more familiar
and welcoming and revived;
and the towns sweetly dreaming
of each other-Tiber,* the name
of the long river seen high up

from Lycabettus.**

SUSPECT OF ESCAPE

I want everything near me, easy to get at and handy,
matter of despair: booze, fags and
a TV control to add channels and subtract them
colour-wise, since the future has become
a stain, multicoloured and dark.
Thus sunk into despairʼs sofa,
lost in smoke, booze
and the black screen, I find it easier
to retire, to abandon my image
without anyone noticing that Iʼve gone,
exited, the glass full and the cigarettes there,
together with my body and the television on,
left without notice, without even saying
“cheerio”, “arrivederci”, “be seeing you”.

THE MAN WHO LAUGHED

The first impression. Perfect print:
genuine Kodak paper, vivid colours,
proper photographic angle and lighting.
That I recognize myself in the person
so pictured goes without saying. But
the dark permanently niched in the eyes
has come out brown, the mouthʼs whirl
is confined to two red lips, the neatly-combed
hair in no way reflects my mindʼs disorder,
and this always smiling face
– how shall I say it? – lies in its teeth,
my dear friends.

THE POETʼS CONSTITUTIONAL

The road is an amazing machine.

Shop windows are an afflatus.

The bankrupt restaurant, torn down
at midnight, is an ideal title.

Trolleys and taxis are marvellous metaphors.

Brief encounters are verses and stanzas.

Poets enter cafeterias in coal minersʼ
rig. The mineral wealth of words.

Chairs are conversationʼs punctuation marks.

Slanderer and slandered (Athens is a big town),
youʼll find them side by side in the same poem.

SARTORIAL APPROXIMATION

Last night my father came
to see me, and he was twenty years old,
his hair combed back,
in student garb,
and with a look – that optimistic
look about life and the world.
No, he hadnʼt got rid of his double-breasted jacket
and tie; that same year,
from a first year law student, he became a cattle dealer
with a false identity, carrying
a revolver and delivering speeches of EAM*
on the mountains and squares of Thessaly.
Thirty years old in my own suit,
I reflect on how I struggled to accept it,
my tie and him, too.
Now that we have all become our self,
where is the revolution that will provide us
with a false identity, father?

*National Liberation Front.

THE DEFINITION OF DISTANCES

On our first night in Prague, we slept
in Cralupi. Twenty five kilometres
to the north: an industrial town, a leading
producer of rubber goods, strong
Czech beer and angry young men, and I
unfolded a brand-new pair of pyjamas.
Two thousand kilometres in order to sleep
in Prague. The thought that we are only
on the outskirts doesnʼt comfort me.
How close is the distance
of twenty five kilometres?
How close is the Party to the people?
Besides, you said, we too are sleeping
in separate beds, but even if
we lay under the same bedclothes,
what would be the distance between us?

DO YOU LOVE ME?

At night I cut yellow leaves.
I plucked the plants on the balcony,
walking back and forth like an inmate.
Do they love me or love me not, people, life,
the worldʼs dream? After years,
forty years, if you donʼt consider them
few, I ended up pruning twigs,
thickets, blossoms and lilies.
At night my memory failed me.
Instead of the trimmings, Iʼd uproot
my entire garden,
and give it to you.

INCIDENTAL LARISSIANS

I left your anger under environmental
circumstances like an open can of beer,
and encountered it as sparkling wine.
In fact, it lent force to you, what I thought
would weaken you, it made you bubbly,
you lovely, juicy lass. We,
in Larissa, open a bottle of champagne
only to make an effect, no one drinks it.
We are whisky fiends.
In the twelve-year distillation, the unwitting
hard-on, we learn after twenty years
what happened to us at the age of twelve.
Weʼre surprised that the end in the end
blesses none of us,
consequences and results
haunt us all the time.
Young island girl, the plain
demands arduous work,
ideal environmental conditions,
imponderable weather factors,
steady temperature. To slog away
without security, and for desire
to be desire only thanks
to communal subsidies.

WILL DRAWN UP IN THE KITCHEN

So let me draw up my will,
the last wish before the end
horizon. I leave everything to those who can discern
sorrow and loss, in how many pieces
a glass breaks when falling
on a flatʼs kitchen floor,
to those who still preserve the snow
of bygone days in their fridge
as preservers of utopia,
the way we should hide our obligations,
we too salaried preservers,
like an ox that hides marrow
in the bonesʼ hole, until a toothy mouth
comes along and picks us to the bone!

MIGRATORY PLANTS

The pots we planted so patiently
and devotedly now bloom and leaf
on other balconies. When I look up
at other peopleʼs houses, tall and removed,
I recognize your plants: the bougainvillea
and the lemon tree, the jasmine with the geraniums,
the fern, the hydrangea, the oleanders.
I recognize them all. Their
nature and habits are known to me.
If paradise is what we loved
released from the threat of loss,
then theyʼll follow us, you can be sure:
not a single yellow leaf shall wound us
when we live together again in a splendid
penthouse with all our friends.

* The river flowing through Rome
**A volcanic hill crowning Athens