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”.

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!

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 conscience,
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 sword the sinister plot, I wear
my slippers back to front, and the last few
drops always fall outside the bowl.

CAMPARI ODE

to Pános Gouryiótis

A red lemon is not yet
An orange. A slice of lemon remains
A half-moon in a glass of Campari.
Moon, its passion falling in drops
Upon my tongue.
A red slice of lemon remains
Having drunk from the same glass
Our share of the half-moon
Like old lovers, like fallen angels,
And you an ancient mistress who no longer hides
Your face among the clouds.
New coins have now replaced you,
Your currency is no security.
We shall not clink glasses
Face-to-face; half of the Campari may
Yet become a full moon,
Red moon, as red became
My white sheets in the dark
When I had sex with you in your absence.
A slice of yellow lemon
That became red as an orange
When my sperm shed blood.
The “well” you gave me for a present was not by chance,

Young bitterish girl
As like as a bitter orange.

(PS: Bilingual edition, Selected Poems 1980-2010, transated from the Greek by Yannis Goumas)

από Σπύρος Αραβανής
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