Κατηγορία: Intercultural Poetry

THEY CAME
dressed up as  “friends,”
came countless times, my enemies,
trampling the primeval soil.
And the soil never blended with their heel.
They brought
The Wise One, the Founder, and the Geometer,
Bibles of letters and numbers,
every kind of  Submission and Power,
to sway over the primeval light.
And the light never blended with their roof.
Not even a bee was fooled into beginning the golden game,
not even a Zephyr into swelling the white aprons.
On the peaks, in the valleys, in the ports
they raised and founded
mighty towers and villas,
floating timbers and other vessels;
and the Laws decreeing the pursuit of profit
they applied to the primeval measure.
And the measure never blended with their thinking.
Not even a footprint of a god left a man on their soul,
not even a fairy’s glance tried to rob them of their speech.
They came
dressed up as “friends,”
came countless times, my enemies,
bearing the primeval gifts.
And their gifts were nothing else
but iron and fire only.
To the open expecting fingers
only weapons and iron and fire.
Only weapons and iron and fire.

DENIAL
On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life: a mistake!
So we changed our life..

13-12-43

Remember me telling you: when the boats whistle don’t
be in the port.
But the day that was leaving was ours and we didn’t
want to ever let it go
A bitter handkerchief will greet the tedium of return.
It really was raining a lot and the streets were deserted
With a delicate, vaguely autumnal flavor
Closed windows and people so forgotten
– Why did they all leave us? Why did they all leave us?
I was clasping your hands
And there was nothing strange in my cry.

. . . One day we’ll leave noiselessly and we’ll roam
Through roaring towns and over desolate seas
With but one desire burning on our lips
It is love that we sought and they denied it to us
You forgot about our tears, our joys and our memories
Greeting while sails rippling in the wind
And maybe there’s nothing else left for us to remember.

The anguished Why heaves up in my soul
I suck in the air of loneliness and desertion
I knock on the walls of my damp prison and I don’t
expect an answer
No one will ever touch the extent of my affection
and sadness.

And you’re waiting for a letter which doesn’t come
A far-off voice revolves in your memory and fades away
While a mirror gloomily measures your face
Our lost ignorance, our lost wings.

Winter Grapes

They took away her toys and her lover. Well then she bowed her head and almost died. But her thirteen destinies like her fourteen years smote the fleeing calamities. No one spoke. No one ran to protect her against the overseas sharks which had already cast an evil shadow over her like a fly staring with malice on a diamond or a land enchanted. And so this story was heartlessly forgotten as always happens when a forest ranger forgets his thunderbolt in the woods.

Without You

Without you doves

wouldn’t find water.

Without you God

wouldn’t switch on the light in his fountains.

An apple tree sows its blossoms

in the wind; in your apron

you bring water from the sky

the glow of wheat, and above you

a moon of sparrows