AFFECTED AREAS (RAW TALES) 2016, (SELECTION)

GEORGE CHRISTODOULIDES

AFFECTED AREAS

(RAW TALES)

SELECTED POEMS Translated FROM THE GREEK

by Despina Pirketti

English Text edited by helen stavrou

NICOSIA 2016

THE CLANG OF THEIR WORDS

for Orestes

I remember my first time in school

how I cried in secret

when my mother withdrew her hand

and a palm of iron

patted me on the back.

I think now

I wasn’t afraid of the teachers

or the examiners

my unfamiliar peers

army officers later on

professors at university.

It was the frigid cycle of their knowledge I dreaded.

Their words

harsh, intransigent, loveless 

like empty walnuts upon cracking

whilst my mother’s words

kneaded together in affection.

And so now

as I sense the same fear in my son

I give him words each morning

words of love

to take with him

to have and to hold

when the clang of foreign words

closes in on him.

FRACTURE

for Ares

The child leans on my shoulder

my shoulder is rough

bones wrapped in muscles

and tendons

the child

longs for his mother’s shoulder

a blossoming cushion

three layers of honey

a tap dripping rose petals

a wealth of rose petals

and fervour.

My shoulder gives way

breaks into shards

under the weight of the child’s

desire.

ODD JOBS

for Theodoros

My son

works with metals

comes home with cuts and abrasions

He works as a waiter

for tips

withered by gazes

My son runs errands

the sun inside him dies

My son harvests olive trees

his hands black with bitterness

He’s a good boy my son

handsome

everyone loves him

Sometimes he is summoned

to other jobs

sometimes

he is summoned

from the skies

to act as an angel

to lift the wounded.

BROKEN BIKES

Their father mended broken bicycles

from the neighbourhood.

On occasion, passers-by would bring him theirs.

His two children ran around barefoot

and ragged

their eyes gleaming with adventure

and its end.

All day they ran.

Swamped with work

he never took his eyes off them

but at a sharp point in time

when the improbable scythed a path through the afterlight

on that blind spot

when the neck fails to turn completely

they slipped away

mounted two saddles

with punctured tyres

rickety chains

broken brakes

and rose to the peak of reveries.

On the way back, a colourful downhill

there

where almost

all barefoot children flounder

they didn’t make it.

In vain he looked for them

their sunless father

In silence he looked for them

No one but him.

Along with others, these incidents

occur in lightless places.

STORIES YOU COMPREHEND

MUCH LATER

Each noon in the parking lot of the block of flats

a policeman would chase after us ablaze

in his shorts

and the orchard owner.

The first bedamned us for playing ball

and ruining his siesta

he’d grab a wooden stick and rush down

to beat the crap out of us.

The second would howl incomprehensibly  

a brute

certain he would catch us

red handed stealing fruit from his trees.

But we were more ablaze than them.

And faster.

It took me years

to suspect

that perhaps more than us

they hated our laughter

and that

power and ownership

have no love for children.

ANDREAS DOE

We meet randomly once or twice a year

Only yesterday he saw me at the supermarket picking

tomatoes.

And again he asked how my eldest daughter was.

-       A son, Andreas, now a student.

-       Right, right.

Brief pause.

-       Is he alright?

-       He’s fine.

The same chat each and every time

over groceries gone bad

at the door of the clipper of names

the repair shop for replacement of limbs

in the queues of dry jobless people

the pavements of the shrunken

the trenches of the city

-       Lean forward Andreas, no, don’t take a bow

just lean forward.

Strange how someone

can always remember the same thing wrong.

I noticed a slight tremor in his hand

though skillfully he tried to hide it by clinging onto the shopping cart.

I do my best to avoid him

but he persists on sharing his embarrassment.

You can’t beat that.

One day he dropped his head

We ran to catch it

downhill.

When I paid the next publisher

to bring out my sixth book

I mailed it to an address unknown

certain he would receive it somehow.  

Years later we met again

in the public toilets

paying for a pee.

“Say, how’s your daughter?

Loved your poem about that guy.

I can’t believe that guy!

Who is he?”

APRIL

The forgotten children

are kicking a ball

in the school yard.

It is precisely 3:30

the sun at this time of the year is compassionate

yet scorches little by little

one after the other

its solstices.

The blond girl

a delicate key-holder

on tip toes, opens the gate

then runs outside

to fetch something insignificant.

The door is left ajar

a child notices and hastens

out of limits

to become a cloud

another child does the same

becomes lightning

the other children turn to droplets and gusts of wind

the children multiply

the children evaporate.

This is more or less how

on that sun-drenched day

an uncanny storm

broke unexpectedly

over the school yard.

CENTENARIANS

There are in India

people over 180 years old.

They drink water and feed on sun;

so some serious guy once said.

I looked it up in the bizarre events section

you have to believe me.

They are more or less 180 years old

hermits in their secret crypts

on mountaintops

amidst the branches of plane trees

and they read the universe.

Their lives are as long

as the sum of the years

of the children who drowned of late

or died along some route.

And then some.

A few years are left over.

Lives long and succinct.

They’ve lived so long these old men

but they’re flat

as if joy is not wise

or grief is wise only if you’re not sorry for someone

there’s nothing around them they enjoy

their world a stern sanctuary

they stepped into and locked from the inside.

What wouldn’t they give, these children

for a few more years

-       so many, the excess in the equation.

I too would trade all my poetry

for a miracle like this.

But these old men, frankly, I don’t think they care that much

in their caves and all.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO’S BROWN BOOK

I’m reading a brown book.

The author is dead

The translator is dead

The main hero took his own life.

I’m still alive.

Sitting on the slope of an unsung moon

I’m drinking a blond beer.

Who says death

is invincible?

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION

There’s something held in abeyance

I really need to get off my chest.

Someone’s watching me as I write.

A boor

I can hear him clipping his nails

scratching and yawning

Then rising, cracking eggs

for an omelette

Switching on the TV

relishing daily gloom

then getting worked up over a derby

puffing on his humungous cigar

sending smoke rings

towards his grey ceiling

crumbling relentlessly.

I could care less about poetry

he tells me, ripping all etiquette apart

I actually don’t give a shit about it

he cracks up.

He thinks he can piss me off

or prompt me to engage

in something more profitable.

Let’s drink a glass of wine, I reply,

my treat;

once again you’ ve given me

the best poem.

ROPE LADDER

She sleeps splayed across the bed

drained

I’m not even sure she’s breathing.

Next to her

my son

cuddled up in the foliage of the night.

The secret rope ladder from the moon

will unravel

and once more I’ll ascend it alone.

She’ll wake up

notice the aimless lingering of the rope

fold it neatly

and tuck it away in the drawer

just like so many other odd things

the sky releases

now and then.