
`
LESSON
For ten years the Achaeans
stormed Troy —
as spermatozoa storm an ovum
as souls storm the sun
and bats the moon — as
for ten years the Achaeans
stormed Troy.
And on the tenth, the lucky
leap year
that wretched wooden horse
forced its way in like a penis
and the Achaeans conquered Troy.
So what?
BILIETO (Iraklion), Nos. 7-8, July 2005 – June 2006.
`
*
CIRCE
She reckoned it would do her good to get out. So she opened the fridge
unhooked her flesh, put in on
glanced at herself in the moon
hanging by the mouth of the cave
and proceeded downhill.
— Where is she going?
— She’s coming to throw acorns at you, mates!
BILIETO (Iraklion), Nos. 7-8, July 2005 – June 2006.
`
*
FOR YOU, JESUS
For you, Jesus, I’ll write a bitter book on sunny, soft tobacco leaves
while my old man drinks to the fire and our two women
wrapped in a red blanket snooze like the queen of hearts discarded by sleep
upon the floor. For you, Jesus,
I’ll write a bitter book and give it
to the fire to memorize and enact before our sphinxlike cat.
BILIETO (Iraklion), Nos. 7-8, July 2005 – June 2006.
`
*
I EAT AGAIN MY FAVOURITE WILD PEARS
I eat again my favourite wild pears
sour in their wild sweetness.
I eat again my favourite wild pears tasting
something of that
animal freedom as they romp stoutly
in their instinct without
humility of choice. Come then
rekindle, passion, and sanctify my deeds.
Come and save me from
humility of choice. Come.
BILIETO (Iraklion), Nos. 7-8, July 2005 – June 2006.
`
*
TINY CREATURES
Tiny creatures, now crawling through the forests of my body, now scurrying
across an open book, now getting lost
in the desert of my table or the shingly regions of a rock, or poised
on a flower amassing wisdom and sundust; aquatic
creatures, winged or subterranean, nocturnal creatures,
trinkets of lunar angels bearing the blob of Darkness,
specks of creation and yet with audio-visual antennae of green and grey; creatures,
some with patched sackcloth on your backs, and others with a conch
assimilating time, or a mediaeval shield, or
the horned helmet of a sun brave; tiny creatures,
wings dotted with the stars of memory and red orbs
like shrunken years and numbers, mutations of naught, or
moments-studs on the Gate of Ishtar; diurnal creatures,
trinkets of solar angels bearing the blob of Light; large creatures,
who live and love and die without knowing,
without deigning to know, who I am, where I’m going, what I look for, sorting out
these black bones of my mind.
`
*
VERSES
I
Come the coarse mountain winds
wearing the heavy scent of origan and pine,
having one on its sleeve the other on its knee
the argent brightness of their touch upon a cool spring.
II
Ah, waxing moon and bounded waters!
The cooolest form as it flows glibly into the well
articulates with a shiver the reed’s posture.
III
And the fountain’s aqueous women
raise up their cool bodies and throw
cool words at each other
like their bodies, like their looks.
`
*
HAPPY SONG
I
Comes my voice, wind of infinity.
Comes my voice laden with
the stars’
Male pollen; it comes
To the flower of your mind.
II
I come from the bounds of
Eternity.
With sheepskin and ecstasy
With a daub of moonlight on the brow
and a horn round the waist
With memories of fire and hoarfrost
I come from the bounds of
Eternity.
I left my footprints on the
Loam of light
Assumed the likeness of water
Assumed the slackness of testacea.
I nurtured winds and softened sounds
Lived the wolf’s transport
Through fire and ice.
I come from the bounds of
Eternity.
I come from an astral desert.
III
I come from an astral desert.
I walk alone displacing the future.
The founts of illusion run dry, everything parches.
Sand abounds and only sand
Space for hard thinking
Space for speculation and freedom
Space for emptiness and fire.
I come from where you are headed for
I come from the astral desert
I sprout alone in the wilderness of nations: a mellow
Sun
Heavy with the pollen of wisdom.
`
*
OR THE CAPE OF AN ANGEL
The woolfell hangs like the pelt of a stellar animal,
or the cape of an angel who in daytime turns to fire in the blacksmith shops
of Agrínion and at night in the plains of Arcturus
herds with a radiant rod
the mountain spirits.
`
*
MAGIC SCENE
And we brought the cauldron on a pole on our shoulders
As the ancients carried slaughtered wild boar, beasts and bears.
And the greenwood observed us with flowers that shimmered
As that mild creature, the Sun, gained height, as the olden magic card quickened.
And fresh crocuses sprouted where dawn had stepped
on the autumnal footpath. And the awakened ants
Moved groggily around their hills, quiet
As our thoughts, that bending down
You could catch your reflection in their sheen.
We stopped for a breath,
And you went for a piss in the thicket, and the vapour rose
` like a reverie,
Like the thicket’s prayer to the Sun.
Later,
As we trudged over the bloomy heather, it struck me
That we regarded nothing with disdain, that nothing
Compelled us to feel
Inept compassion, and driven
By finer feelings
we approached or touched
Each one of our bewitched companions (some turned to stone
others took root
and others got nasty).
Such were my thoughts as we cleared the shrubwood and made for the stream
where Death caught us unawares.
Remember Death?
He wore a putrid, fly-infested hog’s hide. Death before the Sun.
And the water with its long face mirrored the Sun and washed away
its image. And the horse’s rib
(there is the silt by your feet) tinkled: tense
light-
weight bow of Nothing.
And we brought the cauldron on a pole on our shoulders
And found the workmen turning the cistern’s windlass.
And I wondered if not everything in this world
Derives from the turning of this windlass, if not
Everything is derived for the turning of this windlass.
`
*
WONDER
What perfect goats goats are.
Newborn, and they already know
to a T
all things goatish.
You’d think that they’d been studying goatishness
from the beginning of time.
`
*
HIDDEN SORROW
I got myself mixed up with you, self.
Your sorrow, chum, is not becoming.
Your mortal sins are not for sale.
Your ailments, chum, are out-of-date.
I got myself mixed up with you, self.
`
*
I LOOK AROUND ME
Punctual for my appointment
I look around me at all things which
ages ago resolved
and sought to see themselves
with my own eyes.
`
*
DEFINITION
Here I am where the Naught bites its own tail
with pain
and passion
here
in the midst of eternity
at its beginning and its end.
`
*
PASSA TEMPO
Heat and insomnia; mosquitoes
like pangs of conscience, relentless remorse. On the train:
ah! fresh air, green fields, rhythmic trees,
stark, grey mountains slowly turning their hinds to me, and beyond:
a deadpan sea, the very sleep of sky.
Heat and insomnia. My thoughts?
Well, I was thinking of the Jason Hotel, the Halcyon Travel Bureau
and Argonaut Street where, on the bus up front, a blond, suntanned youth,
trousers rolled up like a rating on the sun keel,
giggled together with another dark, spindly youth who moved his hands
and eyes like a beetle.
I think they were poking fun at a huge
pot-bellied man tussling with shopping bags
as he clung to the bus’ slippery handle,
his sweaty clothes stuck to his flesh
like the poisoned tunic of Nessos. Heat,
heat and insomnia. What do I look for? What are these things?
What do I do with them?
My mind’s a sunflower in the dark. My thoughts,
blind bees, bump against mouths and hands which try to kill time.
`
*
THE ROUND ORANGE TABLET
The round Orange tablet
is a sun that fell in the sea,
a giant disk that
wrestles with the water. It fizzes and
froths,
releasing juicy light.
The round Orange tablet
harried by pain and passion goes round and round,
bobs up and
down, bubbles and
dissolves,
painting the water orange.
The round Orange tablet
subsides;
and having liquefied
its resistant shape
lies serene,
reconciled with the water,
with drowning,
with all.
The round Orange tablet
now travels through my veins, and
all
inmates
enjoy the benefits of vitamins,
to the limits of my body.
`
*
WITH INTENSIVE MEMORY OF POWER
I’m afraid, I can’t go on.
I fear people who pursue
things I painstakingly abandoned.
I fear life, death, opening a window
and not knowing what I’ll find, fear
where a thought might take me,
I’m even fearful of sleep.
What I dispose of when awake comes
to haunt me in my sleep. When up,
I pluck up courage and hold out, but in sleep
I am always divested.
For months an adder has been bleeding my heart —
I never saw it
loose among people and places — saw it
but once in a dream.
It had just let go and crawled distended on its stomach.
I couldn’t move
much as I tried; I couldn’t budge
till I woke up.
And so I go from sleep to sleep
seeking to resume this very dream,
hoping that this time with intensive power,
with intensive memory of power, I might be able to move,
and advance.
`
*
THE DEEP GARDEN
And the horse said to me: “Shall we go down?
It’s a deep garden
with sad but friendly trees.” And
in the dim, sleepy light
the trees bid me welcome.
“Have you been here long?” I asked.
“Since the time the angel
slipped and we spilt out of his goblet,”
they sighed. And from the murky
waters
sprang a chubby
moon
satiated with spells and sleep; and
echoing its presence ahead
a dry cistern shouted:
“Nail it down
that my tiny poppies might have a drink. Carve
it up
that my marble horses might have a bite.” And
— swish! — a fiery bird dived down and pierced
the moon (the trees
shuddered as though a spear
penetrated their roots), and I
just managed to have a glimpse
of the blue domain of moons,
recalling
the mountain cave where moonmen
moored their ship —
diamond, silver — the crew
forcing a laugh
to illuminate the bridge. And all at once
the trees’ susurrous came to a hush, and an angel
appeared
who plucked the fiery bird from his chest
and planted it in the earth, saying: “Here
you’ll remain
withering and burgeoning unto
forgetfulness.”
`
*
EDENIC
An angel danced and danced and faded out
leaving ash among us and the stream dry
like snake skin on stony ground and the rock charred
as if retaining the shadow of fire, or of this angel.
Persists the smell of molten metal in the memory, persists
that thunder in the blood.
Like heavy breathing the wings reaped time
and the white bones shone in the abyss, undeciphered;
and the sky opened up with all its animals and stars:
prehistoric animals and dewey stars, a sheer delight,
as existed before knowledge, before the fall
from God’s Garden where a bracing bonfire scented your sleep
by the grazing white ox and sun animal,
as the twilight of humanity nestled under the fig leaves
and the butterfly of darkness appeared, wings mottled with the sun’s eclipse;
and under the sign of Capricorn the woman-apple tree and the serpent
sliding underarm gave a sudden jerk,
showering you with blossoms and spoiling your sleep.
An angel
danced and danced and faded out
leaving ash among us, in us, everywhere ashes.
`
*
STOVE
With whom shall I converse tonight, O stove,
You old iron chimpanzee, my fervent grannie?
Stove with bolts and a door in your belly, stove
Raising a flue for an arm and
Sticking a tortuous fist through the wall. O stove,
Though you have a heart of tin and in your veins
Runs fuel, I know
You are the incarnation of Agnis and offspring
Of Hestia, goddess of home life; I know
You have a kindling soul. Ah, how I love
To hear
Its radiant rumble and
Feel it,
Its blue feet rooted in the fuel,
Doing a naked fling,
Spreading warmth on my body,
My clothing, my books, in the entire
Room, even on… Ah, stove,
How your spirit comforts me in my cell,
What strength I derive to go on weaving
This cloth of emptiness. But then I fancy
That you too share my feelings;
And though you are devoid of eyes, nose and ears
You have so many holes, you must surely discern
What goes on here and elsewhere,
When up on the roof you swank
About puffing smoke through your hat
and such trickery.
I sense it: you hear, smell, see, know all about
The rain’s tender feet, about angels
Dancing and whirling light-
Footedly with
Snowflakes, about the mystic
Mist
Which changes the town
Into the dragon’s haunted land. O stove,
You old iron chimpanzee, my fervent grannie:
Stove with bolts and a door in your belly: stove
Raising a flue for an arm and… O stove,
Let me turn your heart to naught,
Let me hear, lying in the dark,
Your contraction’s
Rusty formication as it gradually fades out,
And my mind slowly sets, and I’m wholly immersed
In purifying sleep.
`
*
THE FATE OF ODYSSEUS
Since Odysseus was opposed to war
not wanting to be enlisted
he took to ploughing the land when he learnt
that Agamemnon’s emissaries were arriving.
He held the plough with one hand and with the other
sowed handfuls of salt
just to convince them he was crazy.
Or was it that by sowing salt, and unbeknown to him,
he was involved in a magic act —
he, destined to plough the seas
for years on end?
THE ANCIENT COUNTRY OF POEMS. Modern Greek Poets on Ancient Greece.
Metaichmio Editions, Athens, February 2004.