Ten poems translated to English from the collection "Don't look for me here"
Woman of the Orient
Your palms slowly shatter
your femininity dry
wind, wind
its dust covers me
Come out of the shadow
red circle woman
lay your hair
on the sea crest
You who never betrayed
the secret passages of time
Your body evaporates
I see it in snow flakes in Pamukkale
voice not heard
you, unforeseen birth
How many colors are you made of?
***
Don't look for me here
I am after the comma
beyond the full stop
Below
below
after the end
I am the beginning,
the void's womb
***
When you sleep alone
you always turn
to
the side
the other body
is missing from
***
I will come back to the poems, she said
stood up in the dead of night
pulled the room to the sea
drenched to the bone
in the dream she had the age of a black shell
From afar the fishing boats were dragging
their shift towards dawn
she lost herself eye writing
the ridges
the transparent of the minarets
the crackle of pine cones in the early afternoon
She did not have time
turned her back on life
but the dawn was here already
she couldn't fit in the dream anymore
***
I OPEN my eyes to the ceiling
of an unknown bottom
in an old house of mine
with a drowning feeling
from a castaway's days
Bubbles sparkling in the air
ornament the dead
billowing in the wire
my former self is someone
who in a dream I had lost
I have a known and anticipated anxiety
the water is drying by the syllable
A sequin I become
in my garden's edge
a thin cleft on the fence
a drop in the cold spring
the yellow soul of apulum
Painted thirst of the morning
on the ceiling of an unknown bottom
curled up in my cat's eye
I am
the rattle and the quiver of an ancient panic.
***
ONCE the night had cloud lining
I would wear it as a slip under dark clothes
so as not to show the flesh
shimmer lightly underneath
Now at the break of day
I escape from the bed sooner
to dress up with a bit
of it
but only some frazzle lights
reach the sweaty window
Boats sail on the glass
shadows mirror the forests
rivers tumble in cascades
oblique looks of the beasts
dart in the kitchen
I keep the light turned off
not to scare them
I open the window
a thick fog rushes in
I cut and spread the bread
a small scorpio on the window sill
just hidden
The day is coming
***
ONE breath for you
one for the plane tree
one small word for you
one for the river
Thus we reach late in the afternoon
with the palm clasping
the carven fence
with the small lanterns of the beasts
tender sureness in the dark
In the deep sleep of the mountain
small stones are rolling
the moss lifts its head in respect
waving at your passing
like a crowd in a football field
You stopped running, you are in no hurry
where can you return to?
The air in the room is used up
you devoured it all
Now you rehearse
in a different rhythm
you bang the rattle
you summon and step aside
***
Every morning
Under the heavy blankets
memories sprout
they hesitantly open their eyes
velvet moss on a rock
small oases of the body
hills and holes of a sheet
in the deepening of sleep
Memory dreams
succumbed to mountain ranges of pillow
memories hard
like the river's pebbles
my childhood memories
were chasing me the other day
***
Only transparent
the words should be
The shadows should leave
the chambers
The walls should stand unsupported
and the doors should open
to nothingness
The phones should not ring anymore
untrammelled should dance
the silence on the tiles
and helpless the night
without bulbs and lights
Only the stars should glow
only the stars
and the earth's breath
***
It is the self as well
Every morning it lurks silently
and looks at me from inside the mirror
I hesitantly touch it under the water
Burnt smells its skin in the sun
I cover the self, I nurture it
I imagine the years with it
only the self – the most terrifying
I fear it, I console it
but surely in the end
despite all sym-pathy
I hate it
and it is the most difficult of all
to escape its charm
Have to be very alert
so as not to identify with it
***
The before and the after the hyphen
(1978-)
It seems like a mortal threat
that hyphen
after the year of birth
as if the beginning is not more important
than the pending end
Every time I see the bio of a living person
I am filled with anxiety awe panic
and I guiltily turn away
my gaze in fear
that while I am looking,
right before my eyes
there
the missing number
will be completed
It would seem then that
I executed point blank
a complete stranger
***
Perennial widowhood
Featly rises
the sheet in her emptied spot
and he pays close attention to his side
he does not move, neither extends his hand
he bites the emptiness on his side for twenty years now
every night he floats alone on it
tied to a single canoe and
waits until the sunrise
his double bed threatens him
inside its stupor so as not to accidentally
fall into the empty spot
For greater safety
he threw away their double quilt
and bought a single adolescent blanket
In his eighties now
he covers himself with it and sighs
lightly in his sleep
due to the invisible bedfight of death.
***
In the name of or into the light again
On rainy day she made up her mind
and gave me my starched transparent
christening clothes
For forty years
she was drenching it in dark
in acid chlorine
and hot water
For the olive oil and the wishes to go
for ill Fate to flow
her hands filled
with marks and old age spots
as if for forty years she had carelessly
been drinking coffee in secret
I look at it as it is transparent and unwrinkled
in the plastic bag
breathing with difficulty
each day’s slaughtered animal
in the sun of the return air christening
in my arms i am consoling it
that lillte one still crying
***
If you ever find yourself
in the big spaces of silence
when the eyes get filled with waves
Wait.
After the western wind
in the next round
a little curly mermaid will come
hoping you have gills too.
Translated by Chrys. Polyzou
Τελευταία Ανανέωση:
Παρ, 04/24/2015 - 10:48
Παρ, 04/24/2015 - 10:48
