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NOSTALGIC FOR THE G.B.
to Chrístos Nikolópoulos
Posh bars have
small revolving doors,
unlike the common ones
where you enter from everywhere –
even through the glass partitions.
Now that we,
unrepentant alcoholics,
are all scattered in the environs
and have settled
in every corner of Athens,
one in Petrálona,
the other in Glyfáda,
apostles of your word,
Mr. Nikolópoulos,
now that Constitution Square
is chockablock with tents and sheds
and the G.B. is full of scaffolds,
its door built up,
the door that only you
will open to us again
in the coming Jubilee,
since a Pope without cardinals
is unthinkable,
as is the Odyssey without companions.
Lord,
we hope for a return,
as an amputee
hopes for his amplitude,
a lover for the strength
to hate again,
a woman to do up
her bosom,
a man to recover the hairs
he lost like dreams on the pillow,
which dreams he blots out one fine day
with smoke salmon and champagne,
and for a friend to see the sun
rising again over the Aegean
from a terrace overlooking the sea.
Lord, I am sitting at the mahogany bar counter,
on my usual stool, the second
to the right of the barman,
waiting for day to break.
Once the G.B. reopens,
and Giobbe Benefactorus
allows
Constitution Square
to be filled with Albanians,
immigrants and provincials,
who will loaf about
exchanging messages on mobile phones,
reciprocating looks and experiences,
may he also allow me
to sit on my usual stool
to the left of the barroom,
drinking, smoking and thinking,
until you throw me down, O Lord.
SOTIRIOS PASTAKAS was born in Greece in 1954 and works as a psychiatrist in Athens, He has published five volumes of poetry in Greek, as well as translations into Greek of Sandro Penna, Vittorio Sereni and Unberto Saba, For the past dozen years he has been a member of the Society of Greek Writers, and one of 47 founding members of the World Poetry Academy mandated by UNESCO. He has participated in the International Poetry Festival in Sarajevo, His poems are thoroughly contemporary and provocative as expressions of the lonely rage of modern Greek sensibility. Sotirios’ articles on poetry and prose appear widely in magazines and newspapers.
