AND A STROKE OF THE BRUSH

                                    Haec Venus est nobis
                                                         - OVID

On the mountain I climbed
the leaves weren’t folded.  Autumn’s
unwrinkled aspect eluded me.
As did so many other things.  A kiss,
a note, a ladder on my stocking, that the tea plant grew
where the sage cast his sleepy eyelids.
Things personal and things
that cover the diaphanous skin with mist.
There’s nothing you can see
by, let’s say, drawing the heavy curtain
and putting the blame on the light
on the natural failing of sight.
The skin moistens from within
making it hard for people outside to see in.
Kisses make the blood boil
and then I forget how and how much I kissed.
Demand is entirely human:
for the skin to glow crystal-like
and the blood to bubble.
(What does it remind you of, the steaming tea?)   

I do so like Picasso’s painting
Ton amour est pour moi ma vie
and a bold stroke of the brush:
I live in classic delusion ¾ without at any time 

insinuating a pointed lapel or the theatre at Philippi.

CURRENT EVENTS

In the middle of the day
whilst people clinked glasses
without suspecting the huge gap that separated
those drinking their raki with aniseed
from those drinking it neat,
whereas the sea was so near
that by spitting out words more and more blue splashes landed on the plates,
whereas nothing boded
that the lottery ticket seller would avoid them
¾ a rowdy mass of people ¾
and whereas the nation, as if to die, was getting off
with certain stubborn politicians on the papers’ front pages,
he
withdrew his eyes from her.

(The sockets, I presume, he gives away.)

PANAGHIA*

In the distance there’s a town in balance.
Large domes implore it
to exist in the world
where they too exist.
Then a south wind blows, the waters rise
the town emerges from their depths.
What can we do, since we can
no longer come out onto the open sea
and the lap of the waves reaches us
as another windswept height?

 

 

 

 

*The old name of Kaválla in Macedonia.   

 

aus/from: The Right to Hope, 2008
Translated from the Greek by Yannis Goumas