Mister T. by the sea
He picks up a pebble from the shore.
Notices the pebble has the remarkable property
Of not having an inside and an outside.
The two coincide.
As he cannot think of anything else,
He decides the pebble is an enemy to the world and throws it away.
The pebble’s fall creates the effect known as “ a hole in the water”.
Mister T. feels immense attraction and an inexplicable envy towards the pebble.
So, he picks up another and puts it in his mouth.
At first it is salty.
It is a sea- thing.
Shortly after that, it is nothing.
A hard lump of silence in his mouth, absorbing his voice.
Nevertheless, to his surprise he realizes
That even without a voice, he can still speak.
Evidently his invocations are granted.
A flock of sea- birds lands by his feet.
When they fly away they leave behind an illegible text.
Mister T. bends down and begins to study it at once.
translation by Konstantine Matsoukas
The siren
The sheets are white pages.
Each night he writes, tirelessly.
Feverishly filling them
as they say poets do.
But in the morning the sheets are wild animals.
They are waves, a savage ocean undulating.
And from its depths a little siren often rises.
She softly looks at him and then
she takes her eyes out and offers them to him.
Two green glass marbles.
Mister T. doesn’t dare reach out.
But how he longs for their coolness and how his fingers
sway like sea-weed.
To touch them.
Her eyes would suck up all the dust
which is the hourglass of time.
They would turn blood into water
and lime walls into crystal.
Her offer is pending
but Mister T. keeps postponing it.
Who can bear to live in a transparent house?
translation by Konstantine Matsoukas
The fox
In the sheath of light she appeared
Crossed the road
A small brown fox.
And again the next evening
Behind a bush fleetingly
And another time only her tail
Swept the darkness
And from then on
Her paws walking inside your eyes
Her warm furry body
Quivering between us.
Always passing never stationary.
“But who are you?” we asked
“I am” she said, “what is always in excess.”
Translation John O'Kane
Tainaron
Here the days do not dissolve in the air
They drop into the water
Forming their very own layer
A surface of separation.
A hawk flies above the body of the summer
It dives again and again
Feeding and getting drunk from falling.
There is nothing here
Only crazy wind and stones
And sea
A random promise
Sharpens our lust with the blade of the moon.
When I arrived for the first time in this landscape of endings
The wind entered my mouth with such fury
As if I were its sole receptacle
Until all my words disappeared.
Every tree receives the wind differently
Some suffer others resist
(I met a palm tree that gave birth to the wind and distributed it
in every direction)
Others shake all over and change colors.
I of course am not a tree
I sat down and wore the wind as a coat
I bent my head and looked at the ground
From its crevices, the roots of thyme
With their hieroglyphics struggled to enter the light
Then the words came back.
Translation John O'Kane
The song of Eurydice
Keep your promise Orpheus
Look at me
Cultivate with your gaze
The meadow of my wandering
Dig for me the journey with
The stiletto of your eyes
Cast your net and
Draw it up empty
Gather in the drops:
In each one
My face will be mirrored
I am the border which continuously recedes
The guardian of distance
And your song Orpheus
Is distance.
Don’t leave anything untouched
Whatever thing you touch
Will never become your own
Every touching all the more foreign
The more foreign all the more gripping
And ready to touch you back
As it alone, knows how
To start up the dissolution machine
And with a holding of your breath
All the blurred red takes you in.
Hold on to the breathless void and weave it.
Translation John O'Kane
PASSAGE I
Trapped in the before and after
we cast furtive glances at the mirror
in it our face is hard
already shows marks
Ahead the road,
youth's unblemished face.
Here, together, in the same body.
It didn't leave
it's not a road you take
nor a skein that unwinds to the end
alas, no
It's a shell which is built from the inside
without seeing the exit
without finding the direction
An unknown intention
unquenched
and the journey is unraveling
not destination
So then let's unravel the stitches.
My grandmother unraveled
a complete man's suit
within a single night
and restitched it from the beginning
from the inside out
That way she doubled its life
from the inside out
It's a two-way route
every instant
every instant multiple
both forward and backward
and even, the same route over and over.
It was no trick. But skillful craft.
What's more without a craftsman's knowledge
all things are doubly lost.
Both as present and as remembrance.
Let the time well up
the ordeal is the passage
To find a way to pass even through a buttonhole
Not to move ahead but to happen
translation by John O'Kane
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