When night comes,
I am so flushed with wine,
I undo my hair slowly:
a plum calyx is
stuck on a damaged branch.
I wake dazed when smoke
breaks my spring sleep.
The dream distant,
so very distant;
and it is quiet, so very quiet.
The moon spins and spins.
The kingfisher blinds are drawn;
and yet I rub the injured bud,
and yet I twist in my fingers this fragrance,
and yet I possess these moments of time!
The moon beams
the glowworm glows
sleep is seldom ruined, but
worry over this heedless lot
ruins sleep in my tearful eyes.
Dawn stands worried at my side
morning urges me to announce
its arrival to the lot.
alas! a thorn inside,
stops me in my tracks.
A delicate rose stem
which I planted with my hands
and watered with my life
its thorns break inside me.
I fumble about to open a door
uselessly expecting someone to meet
a jumble of walls and doors
crumbles over my head.
The moon beams
the glow-worm glows
blisters marking a distant road
Standing before the village
a single man
knapsack on his back, hand on the knocker, murmurs
‘Worry over this lot
ruins sleep in my tearful eyes.’
We present this work in honor of Argentine Independence Day.
Against a wind that breaks,
some are suspended by a thread over earth
that meets no boundary;
in some remote Orient
others will pierce a bone
and through the cavity they will look at what is born and dies;
here the eyelids lick each other,
the thighs bite each other, between one light
from above and another from below.
Tomorrow, perhaps, they will try out gas masks,
they will draw chalk lines
to separate desire from logic;
tomorrow, perhaps, they may weep
and do their clothes up tight
to plunge once more into darkness;
but now, they swing embraced
and naked, placed in such a way
that they look like birds made only of veins;
by their action, even though ephemeral,
the beasts slough their skin,
red tears fall into the sea
and burn it.
Let us eat and drink today.
Let us sing and enjoy life,
for tomorrow we fast.
In honor of this day of Carnival,
let us do ourselves proud,
and stuff our stomachs,
and stretch the skin.
Such custom is good advice,
that we should fill ourselves today,
for tomorrow we fast.
Let us enjoy ourselves today,
for tomorrow is like death.
Let us eat and drink everything
as we head for our flocks.
We won’t lose even a mouthful.
we’ll eat on the way,
for tomorrow we fast.
Past the despairing wail—
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!
Delight, that breathes and moves forever,
Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river!
Elysian life survey!
There, fresh with youth, o’er jocund meads,
His merry west-winds blithely leads
The ever-blooming May!
Through gold-woven dreams goes the dance of the hours,
In space without bounds swell the soul and its powers,
And truth, with no veil, gives her face to the day.
And joy to-day and joy to-morrow,
But wafts the airy soul aloft;
The very name is lost to sorrow,
And pain is rapture tuned more exquisitely soft.
Here the pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb,
And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim,
The load he shall bear never more;
Here the mower, his sickle at rest, by the streams,
Lulled with harp-strings, reviews, in the calm of his dreams,
The fields, when the harvest is o’er.
Here, he, whose ears drank in the battle roar,
Whose banners streamed upon the startled wind
A thunder-storm,—before whose thunder tread
The mountains trembled,—in soft sleep reclined,
By the sweet brook that o’er its pebbly bed
In silver plays, and murmurs to the shore,
Hears the stern clangor of wild spears no more!
Here the true spouse the lost-beloved regains,
And on the enamelled couch of summer-plains
Mingles sweet kisses with the zephyr’s breath.
Here, crowned at last, love never knows decay,
Living through ages its one bridal day,
Safe from the stroke of death!
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 130th birthday.
Grave mouths of lions
Sinuous smiling of young crocodiles
Along the river’s water conveying millions
Isles of spice
How lovely he is, the son
Of the widowed queen
And the sailor
The handsome sailor abandons a siren,
Her widow’s lament at the south of the islet
It’s Diana of the barracks yard
Too short a dream
Dawn and lanterns barely extinguished
We are awakening
A tattered fanfare
We present this work in honor of Independence Day.
We invent our gods
the way the Greeks did,
in our own image—but magnified.
Athena, the very mother of wisdom,
squabbled with Poseidon
like any human sibling
until their furious tempers
made the sea writhe.
Zeus wore a crown
of lightning bolts one minute,
a cloak of feathers the next,
as driven by earthly lust
he prepared to swoop
down on Leda.
Despite their power,
frailty ran through them
like the darker veins
in the marble of these temples
we call monuments.
Looking at Jefferson now,
I think of the language
he left for us to live by.
I think of the slave
in the kitchen downstairs.
Until when are we, oh brave young men, going to live in constraint,
Lonely like likons, on the ridges of the mountains?
Better have an hour of free life
Than forty years of slavery and prison.
Shall we dwell in caves, just looking out at the branches,
Leaving from the world into the bitter slavery?
Better live one hour in freedom
Than forty years in slavery and prison.
Do we lose our brothers, homeland, and parents,
Our friends, children, and all of our kin?
Better live one hour in freedom
Than forty years in slavery and prison.
You work all day, and no matter what he tells you,
He strives again, only to drink your blood.
Soutzos, as well as Mourouzis, Petrakis, Skanavis
Grikas and Mavrogenis, mirror is for your reflection.
I would like to say, I don’t know the road to paradise… that my tongue, the people, and that man sitting contemplating the railway lines in a deep meditation nobody will ever know, existed. My house existed — in a place I am still seeking. It wasn’t in this village where I witnessed other children being born on the same blood-stained mattress I was born on in the same room to which the midwife regularly came, when she went away with the bit and took away the tongue. I saw myself searching for that old mattress stained with the blood of all those who had already come into the world so there would be another child round here. I saw myself not looking for a house but making the search for a house my way. So much blood dried like rust as each cut of the scalpel breached my skin, each cut of the scalpel piercing me, as I lay deadened, anaesthetized.I would have loved the time of the anaesthesia to lead me to the day you are no more, a day you can calculate for 50 dollars on the net.
I would like to say
I write about what I lost, about my vanished blood, about my laughter
frozen into a mask, about this young girl who was chased away because
she sighed next to the wheat dunes, that stuffed the young girls’ mouths with secrets, about this girl who was and is no more, about another one I saw spinning under the ceiling of the empty living room, her dress on fire, she calls to her master to save her, and standing naked in front of all those men. I say: I want neither father nor mother, nor to have them put on my road, or slipped into my story. Without them, I remain, and in spite of them all, I am:
I don’t know the road to paradise
I didn’t save you from hell
Sharia, that void, didn’t strike me,
I will not go to the one who has gone and will inevitably return
I wrote lines, licked the drops from the face
I said: she is of those whose past bears the present
she dashed along the wide avenue trying to cross
like me, you also are a traveller
without coyness, you come bearing that light,
or is it this myth that kills us
Shoot!
Kill, ash-dark bird!
Fall to earth on your feathers
that a wind blowing from the Sahara scatters
sand dunes, purple light
that you cross from where you are not,
this Sahara, our home.
There, two poles.
The coming will not come
visiting rather
he is your guest
suddenly shy when he sets foot,
vanishes enchanted
to where your awakening is
you, the sublime Magus
Amon
tell me, where you keep your remains
where can I find what leads me to them
You, the Thing, the Non-being
when they appeared, fire had covered the light
I write on your whereabouts
to meditate on you,
to envision
imagine
your shadow,
you, sublime creature
Be, a little, that I may see you
Cairo, imaginary date; written unthinkingly 31-11-2013
Poets Corner 