OTHER SELECTED POEMS IN ENGLISH
Inactive Human Material
(Bigger with an – n)
for George Floyd
I'm tired of walking
tired of driving
explaining
talking or not talking
observing;
I instructed the Bedouins
to sow my seeds in Sub-Saharan Africa
and I sprouted bigger;
I asked the Aboriginals
to plant me in the tundras of Australia
and I sprang up eager;
I pleaded with little Muna Zayed from Yemen
to thrust me deep into the fine-grained soil
of her camp
and I grew meagre
yielding meagre fruit.
I want to go to a place forlorn
like the place behind the ear
a place forsaken
by both humans and dispersion
like the cavernous mouth of a hungry man;
I'm looking for a highland to bring back to me each morning
the hereditary blindness of my race
a small expanse of land where nothing will know me
and I shall have no memory of who I am
neither alive nor dead
only still
inactive
indifferent
impervious to tears and rain
watertight and impenetrable
I want to be
the passer by homes-on-wheels in Paris la ville lumière
pretending to see a normal dwelling
the curious man crossing through the tents
of freezing people under the massive bridges of New York
the man in a hurry
to do important things
the onlooker of the white cop
the cop spawned of the Ku Klux Klan
stomping on a black man's throat to death
I want to be like you
Maria, Helen, Persephone, Myrto, Artemis
who walked right by me
carrying the load of my memories
who grazed against me as you went on
the other day on St Justinian street
containing me
your marrow filled to the brim with me
acting as though you didn't remember me.
Translated by Despina Pirketti
*
Αδρανές ανθρώπινο υλικό
του Τζορτζ Φλόιντ
Κουράστηκα να περπατώ
κουράστηκα να οδηγώ
να εξηγώ
να μιλώ ή να μην μιλώ
να παρατηρώ
έδωσα εντολή στους βεδουίνους
να με σπείρουν στην υποσαχάρια Αφρική
και βλάστησα στεγνός
ζήτησα από τους Αβορίγινες
να με φυτέψουν στις τούνδρες της Αυστραλίας
και ξεμύτησα μακρινός
παρακάλεσα τη μικρή Μούνα Ζαγιέτ από την Υεμένη
να με χώσει βαθιά στα λεπτόκοκκα χώματα
του καταυλισμού της
και ευδοκίμησα φτωχός
κι έβγαλα καρπούς φτωχούς.
Θέλω να πάω σ ένα μέρος ερημικό
όπως το πίσω τμήμα του αφτιού
ένα μέρος ξεχασμένο
από ανθρώπους και εξάπλωση
όπως το στόμα-σπήλαιο του νηστικού
ψάχνω ένα ισιοτόπι να μου επιστρέφει κάθε πρωί
την κληρονομική τυφλότητα του γένους μου
μια μικρή έκταση γης όπου τίποτα δεν θα με ξέρει
όπου δεν θα θυμούμαι ποιος είμαι
ούτε ζωντανός ούτε νεκρός
απλώς ακούνητος
αδρανής
αδιάφορος
αδιάβροχος σε δάκρυα και σε βροχές
στεγανός και αδιαπέραστος
θέλω να είμαι
ο πεζοπόρος από τα αυτοκίνητα-σπίτια του φεγγοβόλου Παρισιού
που προσποιείται ότι βλέπει κάτι φυσιολογικό
ο περίεργος που περνά μέσα από τις προσωρινές στρατοπεδεύσεις
ξεπαγιασμένων κάτω από μεγάλα γεφύρια της Νέας Υόρκης
αυτός που είναι βιαστικός
επειδή έχει να κάνει πράγματα σημαντικά
o θεατής του μπάτσου του λευκού
του μπάτσου-σπέρμα της Κου Κλουξ Κλαν
που ποδοπατάει μέχρι θανάτου έναν μαύρο στο λαιμό
θέλω να γίνω σαν εσένα
Μαρία, Ελένη, Περσεφόνη, Μυρτώ, Μηλιά, Άρτεμης
που διήλθες από δίπλα μου
φορτωμένη με όλες τις αναμνήσεις μου
που σχεδόν με άγγιξες περνώντας από δίπλα μου
τις προάλλες στην οδό Αγίου Ιουστινιανού
φορτωμένη με εμένα
γεμάτη με εμένα στα μεδούλια σου
κάνοντας πως δεν με θυμάσαι.
SELECTED
POEMS
Cybele
George
Christodoulides
SELECTED
POEMS
Enia (1996)
Dream Press (2001)
A Grower’s Manual (2004)
Translated
by Despina Pirketti
Cybele
Nicosia, 2005
Contents
Contents
Enia
Violin cases
Final Call
Myth 2
Dream Press
Ghostbusters
Fear
The dead and the things
Parisian Mirage
Re-composition
Singing
Let’s talk about hopes
A Grower’s Manual
Phantom Limp
Rainbow
Deep inside a muscovite night
Doubtful attempts at metamorphosis
A Grower’s Manual
Basic Items
On the verge of a vague self-knowledge
Enia
(1996)
Violin-cases
Instruments are but our need
to hear something else than our stupid voices.
Yet through the sounds of the violin
you come to grasp the meaning of silence
and death.
Violists should’ve been dwarfs;
When they’d died, we’d bury them in their
violin-cases.
I want to stop betraying poetry.
To finally add true meaning to the words.
To carry the silence within in all its grandeur,
and bring it before two unprejudiced eyes.
To stand naked beside them, staring
with this congenitally foolish look.
Then wait to heed
the lizard crawling over the ruins
or the dove fluttering,
an olive-branch in its beak.
Myth 2
He closed his eyes and whistled.
Urged by an impulse born
in the bosom of complete and utter silence.
It was spring, then.
The surrounding forest smelled of fresh greenery –
A reservation, a refuge.
Wherever he reached with his hands,
He touched a life other than his own.
Then she descended from the moon.
She followed the traces of his long whistling
to come and fall asleep on his lips.
Dream Press
(2001)
Ghostbusters
The enemy
is everywhere.
Lurking.
Demanding
vigilance, punishing slowdowns
or
inadmissible clemency.
Take
suicides, for instance.
I
recognize them of course
by their
lethal look.
But as I
stand waiting for their attack
they
throw themselves on my sword.
They
throw themselves on my sword
as if to
kill themselves once more.
It’s a
task that allows for no negligence.
Fear
I am not
afraid of death.
It’s the
burning sun I’m afraid of.
August’s heat, ghastly heat.
Of not
lying
in a beach
not being
kissed by the sea
– I’m so afraid –
than
buried deep down the earth
when God
help me it’s so hot!
The dead and the things
He dies.
The
newspapers read
“Our
beloved is put to the ground today”.
His
personal items
are
listening to the wailing of the women
enduring
their temporality.
The
movement of death
exaggerates
the immobility of things.
Toothbrush,
socks, shoes,
shirts,
watch, a few notes
meant to
be revised.
A week
later they pile them up.
They burn
them – villains! – or throw them in the garbage.
Usually
something is left behind.
Found by
the widow
years later.
She cries
over it
and puts
it somewhere safe.
Self-definition
Behind
the green
lies a
different green.
Inside
humans
lie other
humans.
You make
out the bandage.
You don’t
see me.
I am the
wound.
Parisian Mirage
A parade in Paris; so unexpected.
We were heading for Notre-Dame.
Gold-red uniforms of spearmen;
horses’ feces in the streets.
Love-couples kissing.
La Seine,
a worn-out affirmation.
Tourists looking for the right place.
Souvenirs and curious queues of curious people.
The bells will soon toll
and according to schedule
Quasimodo will take a leap in space
so warmly applauded.
Re-composition
I am
reading your face.
With my
eyes I pierce the skin
excavating
from the cranium
the
demystification of loneliness.
On the way to re-composition
your
features sail the wind.
Your
figure
-
both lake and sun
is the
nectar of fourth dimension.
To see you
To see
you
To see you
I need
to pluck
out my eyes.
Singing
My body carries
the dust of the road you crossed.
My feet bear
the burden of your fatigue.
Long before you came to exist
my door stood waiting for you.
That unknown carpenter who crafted it – he was
singing!
Let’s talk about hopes
In the face of the untold
you’re hoping for something to happen
and hold back misfortune.
Just as every Holy Week
you’re glued on TV
waiting for Judas to hesitate;
Pilatus to dare;
the crowd to see the truth;
that Peter – if all else fails –
will not deny Him.
A Grower’s Manual
(2004)
Phantom Limb
The mirror stands at a shooting distance.
We duel every night,
but the space between us prevails.
Lately
I undergo intensive treatment.
I am not allowed to look out of windows.
Opposite us, Pentadaktylos,
cursing our race.
Then it vanishes
for someday, time too
must return home.
conceals the shame,
now masked
under familial activities.
Facing the mountain
I train myself to stand adeptly still
for my soul cannot move
to a house with a better view.
I never wrote a letter
without a recipient
even when I didn’t know where to send it.
On the other side of the city
I can hear scattered gunshots.
Then again, fireworks explode often
and confusion spreads.
When your mother started screaming
they all thought she went mad.
The truth was, she had counted
the years you’ve been missing.
Pentadaktylos! – you sighed,
How adeptly still
Like our hand
that despite the chronic bleeding
no longer feels the five fingers
it’s been missing.
On the news they report
Kyrenia on its tenth waterless day
and you’re not thirsty.
Calm down, plant something in your garden,
advised the doctor.
It’s too deep.
I can’t reach it.
Rainbow
Snow in Moscow.
Unexpected sunlight in Athens.
Sporadic rain in Prague
and sandstorms in Cairo.
In Nicosia, unusually high temperatures
at night, a speechless starlight.
In Baghdad, the weather is yet again stormy.
Gales, thunderclaps and uproar.
At night, blazing all around and forlorn faces.
It takes clever mutilations
to heal limb-illusions.
The rainbow has been disarmed.
All bows have been removed and
its bend mended,
lest it was misperceived for a weapon of mass
destruction.
Deep inside a muscovite night
Three little children
like three little birds
Digging up garbage
trilling and piping
in hours of late.
And then they flew
up to their nests,
Oh no, they didn’t
fly up to their nests.
I don’t think they really flew up to their nests.
The morning air carried them away
before the prison closed down to claim them.
It is a prison you don’t see
Yet you can hear its bars weighing down.
I saw a child; a child selling flowers
A hundred rubles for each bouquet.
Nobody bought a single flower
from this array of foreign sort.
“He’s lying, you see.
His father didn’t really
desert him.
His mother is not really
bed-ridden”.
How about you, you miserable lot?
How many lies have you said so far?
Without even having to sell a bouquet of flowers!
Therefore
Only if you never existed
have you the right to defend
your humanity in dignity.
Procure immediately
a certificate of non-birth!
Doubtful Attempts at Metamorphosis
So this is where you flow into
when as if by magic you vanish
from the naked eye’s unleaded fire
still discharged by the lost revolution.
Tell me, how much time does it take you to turn to a
flowing speck
in that tiny furrow of the neck
And then like a broken string
emptying its notes in a wide open silent mouth,
gush out into the world?
I want to see if you’d broken the world record,
that another charlatan claims to hold.
He is the one who insists that by an adjoining tube
he escaped to my heart’s canopy
And now boasts of being the culprit of sudden
arrhythmias
and brief tachycardia
and their abrupt transport
to the mind’s small attic.
But when the computer
lingers untouched for a while
larvae in yellow-green leaves come up
crawling slothfully over huge stretched-out leaves
resembling hand palms.
To penetrate the poem
they sometimes attempt; in vain.
To escape the program.
- To become butterflies.
A Grower’s Manual
Your face was different in the morning.
What kind of stab scarred it like that?
I thought I had warned you to quit growing them:
stray hands; they won’t come to sprout
and write the sublime word.
It was inevitable they’d turn against you
enraged at the quality of the soil.
How could they spring with so much blood watering
them?
The blood was theirs and up until recently
it flowed in their veins.
Take heed of my words: I don’t ever want to see you
again
boasting spontaneously to have grown wings for a
vertical takeoff.
What takes off vertically,
vertically crashes down.
You may cultivate twilights
with seeds of unregistered sun.
Besides, there’re so many stale rays in your stockroom.
They long to shine for a moment.
Take me, for instance.
For a long time now I’ve stopped blooming in public
to gain easy access to the bladed night.
I chose to compromise with a secret blooming.
And of course, at some point I had to wither down
just as I promised all jealous dried-ups.
It was then that I turned all my branches inside
to an empty space that if you don’t try out
you’ll never know it’s there.
By trial and error
in all types of movement
you learn respect for absolute stillness.
Look at how many years it takes trees to die.
Basic items
I took two pieces of paper;
one with the groceries, the other with the poem.
I put them in the same pocket
of my magic trousers.
They became tangled up.
The words switched places.
The “cheese” melted so close to the sun
The “eggs” crumbled falling
from the bridge of the verses;
“Red wine” was spilled in a thousand holes yet
unopened.
I finally reached the supermarket.
Shadows I bought at a bargain price
and a love affair left unsold on the shelf.
A special opener
for evocative cans of
memories with an expiry date.
The only misunderstanding hit the rabbit.
“Utterly scared” read the poem,
yet slaughtered I found it.
On the verge of a vague self-knowledge
Between Cyprus and Rhodes
I threw a cigarette bud;
It did not stir the stability
of the moonlit night.
A ship next to our ship
defined the night’s geometry.
But I longed for the waves to break
and wash up the fear of the deep;
the one that, when it penetrates the eye,
we say “It’s the salt”.
We loved our travels.
Leaving the demons
crash into the rock, into the walls
of this pathetic pillorying.
And the sirens were delightfully forlorn
without the least mood to seduce.
Aged, almost,
Using the “Classified”
to seek willing Odyssei
who wouldn’t necessarily leave them
for Ithaca.
The Undone (2010)
Small child speaks deep into the future
You used to hold me tight
in your arms
lest I sink into the sea
lest I stumble down the stairs
(and plunge into the canines’ stares)
lest I overtire
as I staggered with blind eyes into the fall of night.
Only from the blast of time
that dragged me
and casted me away deep into the future
where I am yet to grow up
did you not protect me
and now
that I need your arms more than ever
to hold onto awhile and regain my breath
now that you should ingest my puffing
and breathe me in
- you had to become
the barren twig
of a perennial tree
in an age ridden garden.
My God - when did you wither so?
I gather all the years
on a day I call yesterday
and trace the line that tenderly caressed
my forehead
each time the pear appeared
in a plate on the table
meticulously chopped as always
for fear that it might swerve in my throat
and bring on
yet another choking-induced overturn.
Sea
of happiness
Lately
more often than before you
escape
crossing the line of no
return.
A pale dot you become
not on the horizon
but in the wide sea
of happiness.
Drenched, you return
distant and uncanny.
I try to wipe you
with an infinity dry and
unfailing
that I set free
by transposing a mountain.
Less and less of you I find
each time.
Your joy, misty
is now the color of water;
and your touch,
the incorporeal
that caresses me
when I feel nothing.
Persistently I ask you:
I have a sun of my own
hidden in an unmarked sea;
now that the ice melts
shall I light it up?
It yearns for drought to
break.
You do not respond?
Then why insist on returning.
Have you ever seen the living
coming back to the dead?
Why do you insist on
returning?
Each time
stranger than before you
approach
each time
in the form of someone else
you keep drawing away.
Oblivion
Deep it is very deep
that which lies unfilled
by your absence.
I make to cover it
with an improvised bandage
of oblivion
yet it insists on asking for
you and you alone
obliging the incorporeal
to yearn for matter
and weep.
How can what is not there
know what it misses?
What oblivious man prescribes
the specifications of
forgetfulness
for the things bound to expire
beyond and outside
of what our days
were meant to withstand?
A crafty stranger
with precision is making sure
that the want of them
heavily descends.
As if they had really been
there.
The
undone
How much rain failed to fall
from the clouds’ hesitations?
The sky was black
in labor.
It wanted to rain heavily.
It didn’t.
An invisible wall, hesitation.
The more you climb it
the more it rises.
Breaking against it,
tall waves
of love enclosed
in the unsaid
as dexterously as it deters
dry lives from pouring
those tottering
across the frontier
between land and sea.
What happens to all the things
that were not done? – you
asked.
I suppose they are stowed in
dams of dreams
then channeled
into a thirsty future
with tributaries expanding far
away
beyond any drawn map
drop by drop watering
the undone.
YIORGOS CHRISTODOULIDES
SELECTED POEMS FROM THE COLLECTION
‘ROAD BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH’ (Athens, 2013)
Road between heaven and earth
As I
travel on the Koilani-Amiantos road
suddenly
I come across
Mister
Costas
my
grandfather
riding
his donkey
at
five o’clock of dawn.
Where’re
you headed grandpa? I ask
the
mine is closed
it
cannot be that still you need to work.
His
footsteps
of
many years I assume
curiously
sank into the asphalt
I
followed him with a yearning deep
pierced
by sharp nostalgia
to
have a chat with him I wanted
now
that I chanced to meet him
but
he looks at me strange
does
not respond to my pleas
only
keeps on.
It’s
me, grandpa, your grandson.
Your
furrowed hands
once
held me tight
in
this world
the
whole of me used to fit in your palms
on
holidays
you
took me to the movies
secretly
I would hop inside the film
and
come back
moments
before you awoke
a man
exhausted by the harshness of his days
forgive
me
not
even one single film do I remember now
you
took the temperature that rose within me
on
foot to the doctor for remedies
wind
stricken
rain
drenched
you
never learned to ride the bike
over
rocks your life unfurled
I saw
through you a long time ago
You
knew nothing beyond love
How did
you draw it? Whence?
You
saw strings playing
never
heard the sound
it’s
such a dump – patience;
holds
all the rubbish of the world.
Aren’t
you glad to see me, grandpa?
I
asked.
He
carried on, unperturbed.
How
is this possible
that
you should be among the living
we
rushed to bury you
It
was May
How
could we carry you about
gardens
in full bloom?
He
paused for a moment
murmured
something I didn’t hear
(like
sorrow without the shape of its words)
and
went on bent
I ran
behind him
I
longed to hug him
though
I knew he avoided it
hugging
is not for men,
he
used to nod.
I
couldn’t catch up with him.
He
walked softly
beyond
fast or slow
hardened
since long in the kingdom of silence
I
lost sight of him, he became a furtive shadow
whilst
I lingered somewhere
like
a ghost.
I
looked around me
colours
were fading away
the
landscape behind the Troodos range
dark
blue, leaden
a
feast of ashes
merging
the sum of hopelessness
into
a discoloured monstrosity
I
then let out a long cry
as I
realized
that
no man can ever know
he
died.
Lazarus
On the day after his resurrection
when Christ cried out
Lazarus, come forth
and he rose from the grave, stepped out of the cave
speechless at first
until his senses reawakened
until he recalled once more how live the living
he vaguely evoked through his daze
that he heard Martha foretelling
Lord, there will be a stench, for he has been dead
four days
-and he was mortified!
How could he step among the living oozing with
burial?
It is then he
began wondering
began weighing
the pros and cons
If Christ had
done the right thing
If he had rightly pulled him back to the light
That is to say if he rightly walked again
If it was fair that he should walk again
or if Christ had erred of too much love.
And it stayed with him, this thought
until he was dead once more
without ever having lent his lips again to laughter.
Precarious
counting
The
telegram reads:
As a
result of a bomb attack,
roughly
eighty dead in Iraq.
Obviously
some were left uncounted
obviously
for some they weren’t sure.
Roughly
dead?
Roughly
alive?
Obviously
the number seemed good enough
At
schools pupils learn how to count
One
plus one equals two
Two
plus two equals four
At
schools pupils don’t learn
that
so and so make roughly so
They
are not taught
the
precarious relativity
of
war mathematics.
Matinal image
Morning
reveals onto the day’s canvas
an
image of frozen immigrants.
Standing
at the bus stop
they
are waiting for an imaginary bus
they
need it to take them beyond predetermined routes
they
need it to take them to a land ancestral
away
from employers with soiled nails
plump
ladies ordering them about
old
men melting away alone
they
need it to take them
far
away from the crumbling shed
next
to the menacing river
and
the weeds circling the broken door
the
oxidized hinges that squeak
so to
stop being afraid at night
they
want
to
return in time to see their mother
to
smell their homeland once more.
My
children will soon go out into the street
My
children will go out into the street to play
Only
they will see the immigrants
boarding
the bus.
Of mistakes
I
repeat the same mistakes
In
the way I classify things
In my
relations with people
In
the way I don’t glance at women
In
the perception of the best that should be done
and
what should be left alone to die down
in
the prevention of unpleasant events
before
you become entangled in their swirl
and
spin away
with
my children, at times invading their world
an
effective dissolver of dreams,
mistakes
that only later did I realize
sometimes
too late
usually
with no gain
since
the only thing this knowledge can ever offer
is
that by now in time I suspect
my
current errors
and
in the future I predict
that
only too late
I’ll
find them out.
A house shut-in
(of Ares and Kyriake)
A man
walks into a house.
Two
young children live there.
Their
grandmother tends to them, alone.
She
says she’s 63
but
her face
is
carved with ruins standing tall
it is
creased into furrows
wherein
have flown and dried out
several
tortures
perhaps
because her father killed her mother
perhaps
because she grew up in foster care
perhaps
because she had a hard life
perhaps
because she no longer wants to remember
and
without the burden of memory
weightless
are we hauled
towards
the end by time.
A man
walks into a house
after
a casual series of events
Two
young children live there
their
parents are the broken bedroom window
that
lets in the frozen winter wind
their
parents are the old TV
of
black-and-white horror films
the
rickety door
the
flaky walls.
A man
walks into a house
shares
out candies to the children,
as if
they were his own
calls
the competent authorities to do something
A
year later again he calls the competent authorities to do something
he
wants to erase pain
to
alleviate
the
triumph of mourning
yet
he
will never learn what’s in the children’s souls
the
way their heart beats
how
they get by
on
cold feverish nights
he
will not hear their chocking cough till dawn
because
by now the children belong to no one
- and children
must belong to someone
so,
no, he will never be able
to
leave this house.
Admonition
To
you whose children
have
grown up away from you
and
their whole life can fit
in a
shed beneath your memory
or in
a single roll of film for your camera
To
you who have grown old
away
from your children
without
watching their fuzz
unfolding
into real hair
the
colour of their eyes changing
stirs
blending
and
by magic changing into words and movements
without
ever having showed them how to rise when they fall
You
whose children have grown up
beyond
the fringes of your days
sometimes
frightened within days of their own
you
who never stayed till the end
and
by seeing them every so often
feel
that you have accomplished a duty
I
only want to say this:
Think
of them someday
more
strongly than you have ever thought of anything or anyone
Uncover
the
strength afforded to you
by
the inevitable submission
to
the total attrition of your species
and
confess
how
wrong you had been waiting for things
to
change by themselves
then,
returning to a path
mapped
only
across
your own years,
bid
them a fervent farewell
just
like a dry leaf
in
its last attempt to scent the air
rushes
to strain its veins
before
it becomes scattered
to
the four winds.
The clepsydra of love
In
fear he returns to the eruption of an old storm
the
way he reenters his most persecuted dreams
that
never shone like future.
He
returns knowing
that
soon his unrented interior
will
become inundated
when
his clothes will no longer be able
to
hold more water
and
then he will remember bit by bit
how
their love shone brightly upon time
how
time refused to shield it
how
their love was drought-depleted at its very spring
how
he desperately looked
for
other stocks of raw material
whilst
she was running out of body
her
soul drying out breathless
like
a well
gulped
down
by a voracious crowd of water seekers.
Wants to become
Lately
our
bodies
are
between a lengthening distance
crushed
you
at one edge of the moon
I at
the other
We
look like survivors
of a
global disaster
where
one
just
happened to collapse next to the other.
You
amid sleep’s rosebushes
Me
amid cypress trees
divided
by a
forest dense
its
storms
erupting
over my head
even
as lovely weather
settles
on your forehead
- who are you
smiling to, who’s that touching you in your sleep?
But mostly
in geographical terms
do I measure
our divergence:
You, a lake
that wants within to deepen
I, an ambitious heap
that wants
to grow thicker and taller
become –if only! – a mount.
Translated
from Greek by Despina Pirketti
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