VARIATION
With light
borrowed from your eyes
he came
sweating colors wriggled
on blistered fingers
and you had moved almost
completely inside him
I could see that in the navel
red milk gushed
moons fell from eyelids
and between the limbs a puppy
howled with tearful eyes
baring its black teeth
[From: Blood Harvest, 1991
Translated by Philip Ramp]
HELEN OF TROY
She was sitting alone in her bedroom
her sensual flesh kept her memory alive
and scenes from the war
came to her
young men killed in battle for her sake
heroes languished for a touch of hers
for a look
she liked Paris and Menelaos
and so many other Trojans and Hellenes
now as she stands naked before the mirror
given over to lust
still boiling in her body
she sees her wrinkles as remorse
for the lovers she desired
and didn’t carry her off
and she dissolves into tears
when she thinks of how many other Troys
her incontinent rage
could loot
[From: The terrorism of beauty, 2004
Translated by Yannis Goumas]
THE STONE
You are fruit that splits
and in the centre wildly
shines its stone
resin oozes within
and falls in drops
on my gluttonous tongue
I wriggle wormlike
between peel and pit
sink and stretch in the slime
till spotless white
I enter deep inside you
[From: The terrorism of beauty, 2004
Translated by Yannis Goumas]
THE LEATHER JACKET
I open the closet and pick
my warmest –it’s freezing cold outside–
my most favorite leather jacket
the moment I put it on, its sleeves
become hands, or rather
animal feet with sharp nails
which grab me from the collar bone;
I feel on my back
the chest of a wild cat
that takes my breath away
it squeezes me slowly
–I hear my bones cracking–
and yet
right in the abyss of terror
I see ropes and
stairs of atonement descending
as soon as it draws its talon
from the nape of my neck to the buttocks
and starts flaying me unmercifully,
the black panther.
[From: Insects in intensive care, 2008
Translated by Katerina Steck]
THE STICK
I am not who I was
nor will I be who I am
always and constantly a Circe
touches me with her stick
[From: Snapshots of the body, 2014
Translated by Yannis Goumas]
THE ESCORT
He hardly ever stops following me
without asking
he gets underfoot speechless
he goes either ahead or comes behind
and other times he springs from the sides
which tends to irritate me
but whenever he disappears
I feel I’m half a man
till one day as I was walking
he was untangled from my legs
and fell flat on the ground
for the first time I saw him detached
lying unruffled
I instantly felt that I was missing something
I looked at myself touched myself
but I’ve no body
a shadow I am
and the shadow on the ground
my body
[From: Snapshots of the body, 2014
Translated by Yannis Goumas]
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