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.
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
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
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?
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.
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.
SELECTED POEMS Translated
FROM THE GREEK
by Despina Pirketti
English Text edited by
helen stavrou
NICOSIA 2016
