Work from Paros Poetry and Translation Symposium 2019: Siarita Kouka
DANAKE1
[1Danake, a rare coin minted in Classical Greece with the specific purpose of having it placed on the mouth of the deceased as payment of the ferryman for portage to the land of the dead.]
Hourglass
Tableau I
Two women sit across each other.
One elderly, the other young
almost adolescent.
The first one speaks steadily as in a monologue
or a confession.
They are outlined by a soft light.
Flag on the top mast is one thing
handkerchief at the pier something else.
I’ll go away on a horse, I said,
like a book hero.
But I never left.
That’s why I called you.
To confide in you so you can pass through.
Confession is the dissonance of a monologue
and the road umbilical
to let the other pass through.
And it’s a slippage
because the other certainly will slip.
Then the confession is an alibi
for any temper of yours.
Accept the hallucinations
of a dry-land sea-fighter.
So that you may cut loose the anchor when you must
with an island specialist’s perspective
or something comparable.
Often you have to shrink
because while your space
remains the same,
your reserves constantly expand
like a gang.
You must learn to sever bonds at the roots
without a heartbreak.
As if subtraction has you in pursuit
and you are still trying to compose.
To compose in order to solve the question,
so that you may endure the guilt.
Afterwards, in front of a consenting audience
to solve the drama.
Confession frees the myth from exaggeration.
And myth is a labyrinth without a thread
and you get lost.
When the invasion happened
I wore a lion’s skin
and I defended myself
covering many miles on the same spot.
The question was gripping me
and was devouring its tentacles to satisfy itself.
I barricaded myself in a circle of fire
like a scorpion, so as to sting
and that to be the end.
I fell on the invasion with all my weight
like an anchor,
and I was a foreign body on the landscape.
And my forecasts were ominous.
You still like wooden horses.
Perhaps because they hint at a conquest.
Inside their hollow there is
negation and acceptance.
And the fine distinction
between daring and terror.
You laugh and cry inwardly
like a black-and-white photograph.
You’ve started to suspect.
All adolescents have a sadness
entirely their own,
because others cash in
on time’s rivalry against youth.
Zoephores, in whatever condition, celebrating life
even if buried in a walled-in ossuary.
So then, I am
an aging spring caroler
with a swallow fashioned on my head-wreath.
Because life must protect youth
even if it has to compromise itself.
Like the boat
on the tombstone of a shipwreck.
Strange.
So many years have passed
and still in my nightmares
I see my mother
sacrificing me like Isaak.
On the untrodden snow.
I will become a bad angel,
but have some pity on me.
I didn’t want to confide in you
but
to announce to you two deaths.
Tableau II
The young woman raises her hand in greeting as on a tombstone.
She advances slowly, but in the end comes back.
Her silence is relentless
and she is aware of it.
She answers in a prehistoric language.
I’m looking for a trapdoor.
Somewhere to lay down this parcel,
and then move away
to avoid the gestures
and their fall.
Except that spasm in my mouth
will betray me.
And those metallic things stick out
even with all my sections healed.
In truth
I am afraid to be moved.
I have no water-tight compartments
and I leave a trail behind.
I constantly trace back
to check for any dripping.
Sometime ashes, other times moisture.
In drama
a peaceful pyrotechnician
always intervenes.
He pulls you out
while later he
will explode into infinite
pieces of himself.
And suddenly
you’ll have to learn to stand by one.
I’d like to have a description
that later I’d be able to paraphrase.
But your monologue
was cleverly cold,
as was proper
ahead of an incendiary testimony
and pointless
as a veneer before the hammering.
I’d like to have an overlapping voice.
But the night is deafening
it doesn’t synchronize its bawling.
I pretend
so as to endure its performances
and hear only
the bracelets of the hierophant
whenever he points at me.
You have the metronome of your walking stick
your collections
the quotations
and you erase the marks
with the patience of an engraver.
Give me a gambler’s excuse,
because there is no justice
nor any sympathy.
Only the total indifference of infinity.
I have two live coals
intended for your pyromancy.
Their glow illuminates
a gilded tree outlined
through a crumbling wall.
And at the root
the losses and the omissions.
In the pursuit
I always escape
with a free fall
or with a vertical takeoff.
And the air inside me.
I’m constantly pursued
and always escape.
The fixed idea
it’s the only thing that rules me.
You charged me then
with the worst sentence
the fixed idea.
It will act inside me
like sedative before the operation.
And when I wake up
I will be someone else.
How many boat trips will I forget
the pixie at the ship’s wake
that I had always taken for a dolphin
and the handkerchief at the flow of the wind.
Cry and the echo of a cry
the pain and the memory of pain.
And the plunderings of joy
etching a mark on you
as if you were committing incest.
This rain
writes and erases me
and I slowly change from shape to shape
like a letter of insanity,
or like the bark of a fallen tree
which had written on it
two names.
Now dust is a mask on me
from this earth that didn’t hold me
and from a sea
noose of a fishnet,
veil on the figure-head mermaid.
Under the mask nothing.
Because sorrow has no face
like love in a one-person stage show.
.
Danake shines
witness of a confession
that constricts like an umbilical cord.
And my veins
red hourglasses
will empty at the same booby trap.
Danake
Tableau III
Two men sit drinking.
Sometimes the glass is heard
on the marble surface of the table.
Not with vehemence, nor out of habit.
But as a confirmation.
The younger one speaks first,
pouring a little of his wine on the ground.
I waited for you reversing the terms.
I would have liked to lift you on my shoulders
as an Olympic champion,
not to end up being laid over you.
Indelible fate
I’ll strike you out, I used to say,
I’ll shine inside myself
like a blind man in a torchlight procession.
When they gave me the crutch
I said that I’d been marked by the Gods,
otherwise
I would have killed them with my feet.
Even contrition has its measure.
Fate to the furnace then
and its ashes to a box.
Then I assumed
the imperceptible agility of marble.
And the white
which exposes,
and I was fastened to the bundle of decay.
I wanted the extractor
to turn his face
to the sun three times
to stand against the weather.
I wanted a bonfire
with seaweed for kindling
and that night
to be brief.
Brief like this encounter.
In this place,
social gatherings are not allowed.
And as always
privileges are no concern of mine.
Sometimes I invoke
other decisions, already taken,
other pretexts,
other particulars.
Offerings to an arbitrary faith
and certain innocent expectations.
I wear my laurels
on my vulnerable parts
and I confess.
At other times I seize the times.
Any absolution bores me.
And my generosity deceives.
This acquaintance-making
is a parody
like splicing bones
like a meaningless confrontation.
My feelings
are not exchangeable
and I don’t partake in enthusiastic expectations.
I climbed up
the arrogance of promise
and I became impenetrable.
Some unintentional instinct
was always helping me escape.
And I never defended
painless obligations.
I invoked
the authority of myth
and other idolatries.
But pain cannot be assimilated.
It assimilates like a duel.
And afterward all gestures
are superfluous.
Tableau IV
The table is cleared
the young man walks away
while the other man
traces a circle on the stage
around himself.
There is a strangely dim light
like dusk or dawn.
In my amnesia
I learned by heart a childish smile
and that sadness from the time of the Occupation.
The one and only pair of shoes I had
I saved for celebrations
those times when I was the best dancer
throughout these parts.
I took an oath by hunger
to keep singing to the end.
Then in my silence
I carved birds on my crutches.
I saw the markings of my times
tattooed in the bodies of young men.
You wanted an authentic journey
on maps I was constantly changing.
My fates were three
and they had said
that I would have protectors to the end
and they considered that as amulet.
The only thing I wanted was
to test my potential
on my own,
and I was never able to do that.
There is no way to express
the apology.
I charged you with the defense
without fortifying you position.
And you discovered
all the heresies.
After my bout of spitting blood
I showed my chest
and the decoration
pierced all my body-cells.
Obsessions.
You point at me
with a dorian glance.
And I have to endure
the penance,
with an unconfessed
anemic bravery.
And my wounds
like those of the Diaspora.
I kept on showing my wounds
trying to control your boundless conquests
and other involuntary ploys
for my self-esteem.
You stormed my hide-out
accidentally.
I retreated then
when I felt inadequate.
Exactly when
we should have competed with each other.
And I found a sanctuary
In my storytelling.
I would have liked to be a prodigal son
to have exerted no authority
to have asked for no recompense.
Youth cannot be sustained
with ghosts.
It constantly changes directions
because I had constricted
the horizons
and how could they contain you.
And time piles up
and always unloads in the void
as if in an hourglass.
And then an arbitrary motion
and memory as action
and the action as memory.
The word then as a piece of holy bread
and how can you forgive
and forgiveness and its mandates
and then after forgiveness
alone again.
Tableau V
The man goes away
in the same direction as the young one.
The light that gave to time
a sense of duration
suddenly goes off.
THE TIP OF THE ARROW
AND
ORION
In the waters of Delos
the arrow of Artemis
finds Orion.
Just before his hand
breaks the surface of the water
his voice is heard
like the screech of a passing seagull.
I could narrate to you
a story
with a beginning, middle and end
a safe composition.
There are clear speech sounds
and others that are traps.
Then I could find a motif
to bring you back
to original repetitions.
Certain conduits to my depths.
Perhaps we could form a single body
spontaneously.
With no purpose.
No experience.
In the synopsis of your quiver
I would place wings
I’d be pronouncing your name
simply so you wouldn’t take fright.
You and your prey.
In your name
the infinity of names.
I wanted to travel over you
as on a constant past
with its consequences
but you
in your variations
you’d take me by surprise
as if I was constantly
falling into a trap.
In the midst
of your ambush
my zenith
as if I had penetrated
into your folds.
Finally, I would save myself
by proclaiming you innocent
with a holy passion
of sacrifice.
And again I would hide myself
in the absolute of sacrifice
In your deep forests
dry branches
and your vacillation
after stopping
and before flying away.
A dry branch
small swing for winter
and I
a voyeur of good-byes
with a smile
falling from my mouth
like bread crumb from a frightened beak.
And when you were taking too long in your forests
I would talk
just to hear my voice
over the whispers
and the creaking.
I had my voice
and that was my only
identification
but a native one
and it contained the whole of me.
You liked at that time to listen to
my voice
and my voice strings
on your fingers
just like the string of your bow
or of your brother’s lyre,
exalting you
Now how will I solve
the dissonant spans
of memory.
Constructions and shapes
in molds and out of place.
Accumulated void
and suffocation.
I am inscribed totally
like the day
after the rain.
Without any promises
or any appeasing
constellations.
It would be great at the bottom of my sea
with the water sparkling
on my body
like on your own
and that of your maidens
after your bathing.
You have prescribed
the euthanasia of guilt
with a firmament
to envelop me.
Your divine arbitrariness
has made of love a myth.
In your own firmament
I won’t be myself
but traces or fragments.
I won’t be nature
I won’t be a body.
It would be great at the bottom of my sea
and a slow liquid friction
would serve justice.
How does the backwash
left behind by my spasms
runs into
the lines of your tunic.
I become transfused
by my very pain.
And how can I exorcize you.
Just like your animals of prey,
will remember you
as long as their eyes
contain water
you being carelessly half-naked
and merciless
and your heartbeat
under your garment.
Then continuity is lost
peculiar memory
in a timeless mourning.
The centuries and
the points in time
write lines
and ideograms.
Cave art
and the motions of medulla
slow
like a live shellfish
in the mouth.
I remember
and yet I’ve never spoken.
And an unfamiliar body
my body.
And you at every moment
unrecognizable.
How will I recognize you?
And the sounds
vowels consonants symphonies
consistent echoes.
I feel sorry
this pain is not a living one
but an incinerated pain.
A lava of rage
and then it was extinguished
creating layers of rock
and immobility.
Broken pieces
and the same projections
as of your face
in a shattered mirror.
The extent
of the extent of the iris
in your eyes
will foretell everything
without magic spells
completely naturally.
I change color
to adapt myself
like a wild rodent
to a gallows trap.
At the edge of the fall
a red trace of blood
is a private matter
in bloody weddings
and in transfusions.
I could treat you to
a glass of red wine
and to the name of my desire.
A supercentenarian desire, a pearl
from the deepest ocean
and then
a fissure
and the dangerous leakage inside me.
And you keep dancing
all through the smoke
and the forms.
Beautiful forms
genuine
they laugh at sleeping matter
and the signals of danger.
And the sign of the gorgon
looped on your neck
like something of mine
like mortal fear.
I see the blood
and I remember caravans
and nomads dancing,
and the goddess violence
of a contemporary mythology
along with the emissaries.
Beautiful words
that describe you
and I’m engraved
on body cells
so I may fit inside me.
I can hear a deep sound
like an anchor that breaks
the water’s continuity.
Before diving.
Now this water
will become mine too
my own boundaries
my own fortification.
Like the scorpion of your arrow
like your devastated maidens
and the edge if your garment
which fatefully I touched.
Love will be lamenting
inside your temples
and only art
will appease you.
And your soothsayers
of all the generations
will be decoding
the same supplications
in the catastrophies you bring.
The unequal self-denial
that tears to pieces
the one in love.
I find sufficient neither the air
nor the abyss.
I am compressed by the abyss
and so make myself equal
but the wind
makes me different.
Are these fishnets for the seafoam
or for the bottom of the sea
and that shimmering
is it my imagination
or is it a mermaid?
For just a moment
when I looked up
I saw two wings
transparent at the edge
from sunlight.
I liked the sea-wave in your hair
like panic
between the seaweed
and the sculptures
I was making in the sand
the ones soon to be lost
very naturally.
And you were testing me
like a sweet winter grape
one hand of yours
smelled of laurel
and the other of wild mint
the one that grows
in house courtyards
and also by the graves.
I wanted the sea sedated
so I could fit in
the way you fit
in your own things
in the people who resemble you
in any memory you charge
only to yourself.
And something fixed
to be my characteristic
like a solitary palm tree
in a desert island.
The same untrammeled sequences
absorb me
like an anchor.
Sometimes I sink in
At other times they pull me out.
Easy as when you squash
half a grain-shell of wheat
the tiniest vessel.
Even though it contained germination.
And the bonds
and the ties
and the enigmas
of memory.
You were here
and absent.
And now
how can I remember
and redeem
the violation of the myth…
The clear light of Delos disappears.
Pleiades will be rising soon.
At the point of Orion, the same rock
receives contemporary arrows
and the hymn to holy mother, our champion.
THE PRETEXT
Tableau I
Interior of an empty house.
At the back of the stage
the windows can be seen
all walled up, on the right the door,
also walled up.
As if they had walled them in a frenzy
the mortar slapped-on
stands stiff like lava.
A woman wearing black
walks about holding a
large sack filled with a hodgepodge of things
that she empties out in unexpected moments.
Yellow lighting.
I cannot stand
certain dates.
Eves and the days themselves,
also the ceremonies
and my offerings.
In my dreams
I was always the jester
and would be wakened by a tragic fate
and something over and done inside me.
A broken
little wax doll
in a
garbage dump.
Yesterday I dreamt that a weighing scale
was projected on the horizon. I was
on the one plate, on the other a yellow bird.
And the Scale shouldn’t tip. Otherwise
I would be sacrificed. And I kept
taking my clothes off to empty my weight.
Lest I’d be saved.
I was always careful about my baggage.
Some archetype
made me always check
in case I had forgotten something,
while I knew from the start
that nothing was forgotten.
How could it be otherwise.
Memory’s a vortex
and it has swallowed me.
And the baggage is the bridge.
And in every bridge
someone had to be walled in.
So that it will be strong.
Therefore the voices.
Under these wings
I existed once.
Each one
has adorned a hostage situation
and a stormy vision.
The morphology of a feather
or even its color
is a certain elevation.
Even of a feather
disconnected.
Every disconnected feather
an unfulfilled flight
a parody.
So then I carry around
my baggage
to my own Atlantides
and to an endless
line of eucalyptus trees.
And the eucalyptus trees
change their skin
like snakes,
they change their marks
and I can no longer recognize them.
I want to return the votive offerings
and I scrape with my nail
whatever is left over.
Under many layers
of skin and color.
After the immunity
the rage.
And that rage
a weathervane.
During the day I vilify
my sour-tempered nights.
And the baggage
is a consolation
in the tedium.
Because it is the same
both in feast and in mourning.
I showed to be robust
because it was necessary for me
to be able to handle
so much baggage.
Sometimes it sucked me in
entirely
like a trick
like a swamp.
At other times its volume
was the very substance
for my selfishness.
And its thud
when I let it fall down hard
a certain identification.
And its thud
was Babylon.
Every article
with its own language
and I spoke them all.
Afterwards I learned a different reading.
I was reading every mark
on myself
because my body was
a relief map,
and I had methodically underlined
all the routes.
Moreover, the baggage
Is a kind of a fortress.
In every conquest
I demonstrated bravery with ease.
In reality
daring would have been
for me to run away.
The baggage was my farm.
There I cultivated
every vanity.
I extended hospitality to mementoes
and to my prey.
And baggage was
a religion.
With anointment, votive offerings
and wooden statues.
I was providing everything
for its security,
and for all else.
A certain ill-defined term
and my space
a subject territory
to other people’s baggage.
And I devoted myself
to be arranging it
according to instructions.
Then they started
rearranging it
in a vertical order
and they reached my height.
So I learned to be an acrobat.
Under my feet
bottomless gorge
a crater.
.
A sulfur smell
in my craters.
Like a leakage inside me.
That smell
reminded me of something
and I settled
at an angle to the apex.
In the light
I saw that I was full of holes
like an abandoned mine.
I shouted
and the echo
was heard like a kick.
One day I woke up
by a burning sound
I was in the dream
where
they had thrown my brain
in the furnace
And my hair
had suddenly turned white
as of a fighter pilot
after the fall.
Separated
since time immemorial
from my constituent parts
and I had to step aside
or resist.
But compassion
is a paganistic affair
and self-pity
a sweet anodyne
and it violates you.
I was constantly telling myself
an anagram.
I assigned strong points
and concentrated
like a breakwater
to the end.
The fragments
were moving back and forth
on my cutting edges
like a pendulum
and I the station
the threshold of the coming tide.
And the tide
an accumulation of tears
will sweep away
and will make visible
the same untrammeled
sequences.
But the landscape
will be different.
But it isn’t the reefs
and the bays
that change the landscape
but the tide
and the new moon phases
that change you.
I’ve passed this point
forty-seven times
and I have started looking like it.
I felt the same anxiety
each time I passed
although from the beginning I knew
the estuaries.
In the estuaries
another labyrinth.
An early pain rules there.
That pain
has fiery lips
and it marks you
right on the forehead.
And the marks
are a natural projection
and an insolence.
Like praise
and at the same time disapproval.
It would be indifference
for me to be untouched.
I turn around inside me
and drift away.
Tableau II
The room is in a mess.
Papers, feathers, clothing
are scattered everywhere.
The woman stands in the middle of everything
without looking.
The light goes off
and a little later
it goes on again.
The room is empty
and stretched on the floor
there is a big red cloth.
Siarita Kouka
Translation/Μετάφραση
Αngelos Sakkis/Άγγελος Σακκής
NOTE: The translation above is a work-in-progress
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