Poetry Collection, Missing a day (Kedros, 2003)
The Kiss of Life
To Vladimir
I let you
exhale
but remain
with the misgiving
about how I might
have saved you.
translated by Peter Constantine
Letter from Palestine
(Yadon Illaheyya)
Jerusalem, drifting city,
Giorgos Seferis
I've been wanting
to write to you for some time.
But the moment was never right
for you to listen.
Now I imagine my letter
will find you
sitting on that concrete wall,
in the shade of the olive tree,
listening to midday approaching.
Believe me, I didn't know that
dividing lines,
stoplights
and signs
could presage
separations and times
without the inalienable right to communication.
I've missed
the white vest
and the pyjamas with the same pattern.
One morning I think you'd said:
"You'll sleep on my back
and I'll travel for you".
That we might conquer the whole world together,
wear the light of the East
and hide in the smoke
and cigarettes
- not as a means of self-destruction,
just out of a need to understand.
Now it's too late;
I've switched off the kitchen light
and the dog is breathing contentedly,
tonight it has our breaths for company,
though we're forever separated
by a Jerusalem,
at a time when no one can understand
why so many soldiers fall upon us.
(I love you even if it's madness)
translated by David Conolly
Poetry Collection: Faster than light (Kedros, 2000)
Oriental
Your little oriental teeth
and your lies
caress my shoulder
like an emollient Vietnamese perfume
in Saigon.
translated by Peter Constantine
Poetry Collection, The stars move in line (Kedros 2008)
MANUSCRIPTS OF AUTUMN
As Kalamata spreads out
I show you the brightest path.
In the meantime, father is waiting
quiet and thoughtful
to console me.
"The visitor didn't come", he tells me,
"but you should always remember
the wooden ladder I helped you climb
as a child and the perforated autumn light".
I pack my things hastily.
I feel repressed in here.
The walls have memory.
Silence is electrified.
The moment I go
I want to kiss you.
Stop crying.
It can't be every time you dream
to be robbed of your flowerbed,
to be deprived of the joy of return.
All right, you say to yourself,
after all, I owe nothing to nobody.
I only owe an apology
to memory
and to Ms Polydouri
while browsing the manuscripts of autumn.
translated by Roula Konsolaki
Poetry Collection, Day and Night (Polis, 2020)
The time of poets
The house silent
sometimes glows
with windows open,
the fluttering breeze.
Peaceful morning,
there is no quay
just a little cerulean
in a child’s drawing
on the wall.
While silence prevails,
the story goes like this:
how we were secluded
in four walls
surrounded by
the dreams, the memories
forcefully appearing
already in the present.
Translated by Roula Konsolaki
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