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               ANDRÉAS ANGELÁKIS
      (1940-1991)
                         
         Selected Poems
                              
     Translated from the Greek
  by Yannis Goumas
                                         
 
From The Prince of Lilies (1964; 1980)
 
THE PRINCE OF LILIES
 
He stood to have a breather on the evening threshold.
His breath calm like the sky.
-- Remember, he had said, a house
is not just smoke and stone, nor
even dawn and dusk with invisible diagrams,
it is something else, like when we count
how many wells are hidden in the sea.
 
He remembered the Prince of lilies who was building
his house with chick-peas and cypress cones,
because he feared the stone’s revenge    
and he had treated us to gingerbread
by the royal fountain and his wife
had snakes twisted round her legs.
Because a house needn’t
be only stone but a door as well
and beggars are discreet in reminding us
that it is synthesis, sky and earth.
Because a house need be only
a chair or a plate-rack’s silence.
I know -- Knossos pointed to the door
and was annoyed that I held the cameo in my grasp.
The Prince of lilies has no hands,
God has called him to his eternal rest.  
                                                --
 
REFLECTING
 
Looking at his worn-out shoes he reflected:
in melancholy is God revealed;
All those clouds that come
and go in our dreams
kindly sprinkling our sleep
are trustworthy messages and rarely deceptive.
 
Sorrow for the fragility of things
caters for our faith, especially at night,
when people grow weary of their dealings
and remain crouched, expecting nothing. 
                                                --
 
I COULD
 
I could for hours inhale
your breath quietly, hearing you
speak like the sound of rain on a flower
about irrelevant matters.  Thus little we understand
one another, but you know, it’s enough
that I see your hand turning
the page of a book half-lit by the lamp
or your back covering the room
and me keeping silent.  Time has brought
this unexpected happening inside me:
it shone you honest and now I feel you
as a verdant fire growing more intense.
How noiselessly walks the night, prudent
for what remained unrealized or untold.      
 

                                                --
 
From Room (1977) ???
 
THE MURDERER NEXT TO ME
 
I always have suspicions about someone sleeping next to me.
For a start, who is he?
Is he the same guy who touched me earlier, or someone else?
Are his eyes, his voice, the same colour?
I can’t see well in the dark.  I light a match.
His brow lightens, but his eyes,
the only evidence of truth, remain closed,
submerged in a fishy dusk,
perhaps ready to attack.
His hand, of course, remains gripped in my palm
callous, slightly damp, inert,
but it could well rise abruptly
deviously or violently at any moment to grab me by the throat.
Maybe he’s dreaming that he’s chasing me
through deserted quarries, through corridors,
he reaches me, lifts the knife,
aims between my eyes,
brings it slowly down.
The match has gone out.  I light another.
The dried spunk on his stomach
protects him with thick scales
He knows well how to defend himself behind his nakedness.
I look closer.
His shoulders inspire trust,
suntanned, strong and smooth,
His neck, turned to the right,
looks like it wants to be caressed, but the hand
hanging down to the floor has its own life,
probably its own plans.  It’s dark again.
He stirs in his sleep.  He moves.
He turns towards me.
He stretches out his right arm, wraps it round my waist.
His legs are entangled with mine,
has the hour struck?
Silence again.  I feel his body leaning
heavier on me.
Now I’m certain.
Murderers sleep like babies
a sleep full of milk before they hit.
I must be on the alert.
 
It’s dawning.
                                                --
 
From Talks of God and the Sea (1962)
 
 
DISPOSITION
 
I’m sorry that you are so good
without a shade of memory on your comb
or fate’s wrinkle on your palms.
You resemble a god’s lot
who walks slowly along a river
and the storks quietly contemplate.
I’m chary of people touching you:
 
the stream is deep, of blue stone
and loneliness has silvery fingers
that weave useless cloth and hear
one voice crying “mercy” to the other,
the legs, deer of glass rooted to the spot
and the echo drifting in a forest of rain.
 
I’m sorry that my entire soul culminates
in the azure phonemes of your face
and secretly leaps imprisoned.
 
You are good, I’m sorry.
                                                --
 
From Room (1977)
 
 
THE OLEANDER
 
Every morning your mouth smells of oleander
and as sleep still lies heavy on your eyes
I take you again where the darkness
shielded us yesterday
without identity, assimilated and entire.
What little light enters through the window
makes visible the marks on the neck,
the breast, the belly, as if from a fight
our love gave and won
and you awaking serene
and sperm-silvered,
making sure of my regard
and going back to sleep in your oleanders.
Who knows what you’re dreaming of and won’t let go of my hand,
pressing it and unbending like a child
afraid to be left alone in its dreams.
You plunge into a sea of me and you
without seaweed and sky, only
mouth, perspiration and whispering.   
                                                --
 
BITTER ALMOND
 
Kiss me again and talk to me; it’s been long
since anyone kissed me, as happens
with syphilitic blokes or old geezers.
You know, as in the past my soul rose
to the lips and filled our mouths with saliva,
bitter almond and that sound on our tongues,
deep like hidden water under the leaves,
chosen by our heart to tell all that was untold.
So.  Now place your hands on your breast
as you usually do, and let me look at you
shyly, heavy with bay leaf and your kisses.     
                                                --
 
From Thrasybulus Street (1979)
 
 
THRASYBULUS STREET
 
My life is haunted on this wretched bed
by all those bodies that rolled
on the blanket.  So many names, so much mist,
such unbearable sorrow.
The plaster is falling on the walls,
through the holes a thousand eyes,
voices weak, stifled
and years -- what, six? -- of much of a muchness:
the tap, the melted soap, the trash
on the stairs, empty bottles, shrivelled condoms
like T-shirts with no warm body to wear them,
the looking-glass with time stuck
in its cracks.  Your face.
A north wind is blowing, the drizzle drenches
the tin pots of pelargonium in the backyard,
remember?
The iron staircase with the fat landlady
who would ask for the rent after Mass,
the priest’s eyes through the church window opposite
reminding me of the inferno,
the devil in military police uniform lighting a cigarette
on the corner further down, suspicious, threatening
his gun aimed at me
ready to grab my money and my neck.
Rat-tat, the rain has stopped.  So much has happened
since you left.
I gather pieces of your face
on every random face, as the king
his mangled son in the fairy tale.
Winter has set.  Nutmeg.  Upstairs they are baking must-jelly.
“How can a few kóllyva* feed
all the beggars?” says the churchwarden.
“Yesterday you left your door open again.
Someone wearing a black duffel coat came knocking
around eight o’clock.
You should be careful;
all those junkies, criminals and paupers                                                 
could clean you out.
 
(Suddenly there was a smell of jasmine; I quivered; where can you be?)
He said he was looking for you, apparently you were expecting him,
an acquaintance of yours.”
“Yes,” I replied, “I was expecting him, he is Death.”
“Oh, balderdash, you’re still young man,
touch wood,
but there’s no harm in being more careful.”
 
She too remembers you, but mum’s the word.
She looks sidelong at me as she plucks pelargonium.
But I too get my own back on you, you roughneck --
I shut the ramshackle door
and eat your flesh without remorse
like a cat that tears to bits her kittens in the washroom.  
 
 
 
 
*Kóllyva: boiled wheat offered in remembrance of a dead person.
                                                --
 
MY WIFE’S LOVER
 
My wife’s lover’s coughing
he looks me in the eye like a frothy-mouthed cat
he calmly claims his right to the meat on his plate
leaves his pants, pyjamas
and ring on my pillow
whispers words of love
pointing to the new building opposite,
he spits at me
is lost in my sleep or gets his fingers burnt
he makes for the sea                returns
holding a huge fish                  a fishbone
he cuts the moon into small pieces
silvery light falls as dust on my cock
he goes up to my wife
cuts off her thigh her hand her ulna
inviting me to chew them together
“what if you what if me it makes no difference
we have a common end
she will devour us”
a dormouse flashes by
my wife’s lover is mirrored:
his image resembles me
we have the same look full of suspicion and sorrow
I love you
he hands me my wife’s head nodding “yes”
her head and hair reek with blood
her eyes roll on the floor like beads.    
                                      --
 
EROTIC
 
Your lips are parted      they have ripened
you can’t be more than seventeen
with a vertical line on the skin like a fig
split     opened
and July came out from within;
my lips closed tight for years
went to say something about misery about bitterness,
to utter your name,
you seized them sucked them and there was
no end to summer
all red flowers of fire of blood
herbs cooking pot and love.   
                                                --
 
OLD MEN
 
“Old Men”.  That’s what they’re called.  Not Andrew, George,
Elias or Theodosis, but like ants
that live beyond good and evil
without special physiognomy,
as dogs and horses,
like masks: wrinkle-lipped
terra-cottas, drowned feelings, wounds and holes.
That’s what they look like.  Sometimes they remember them
and stick a knife into their bellies,
shove soft pears down their throats
or cut off their finger wearing a wedding ring.
They themselves wrap a bandage round their hand,
say nothing to anyone  
and it’s a if they expiate themselves in white,
they feel better,
as if having gone through a snowy night
but the heavy snow blinded them
they can no longer bear the white
and so they sink even deeper
in memory, sewers, black,
there where everything shines ageless,
there where for a few pennies they have a kiss on the lips.
But sometimes they make love (well,
so to speak) --
and instead of closing their eyes like those strange fellows
they open them wide, astonished, abysmal
and transparent.
They suck the horny penis
like their mother’s nipple
and afterwards rub gently the milk
on their face
deep inside a forest with ivy and wild strawberries.
They click their tongue.
They hand over their wallet but keep
some old black-and-white photos
and are careful changing the bandage on their hand.   
 
 
                                                --
 
From Metaphysics of One Night (1982)
 
 
CARTESIAN LOGIC
 
Each body has its own hell,
its own furnace,
each body has its way of imploring,
it hugs with a despair of its own,
it pushes love onto death,
pushes love into a room of mirrors,
who are you?  who’s the other guy?
you keep still to be caressed, as if dead,
the colour of the eyes changes, turns dark,
black, mauve of loneliness, of the strange kiss.
Each body has its sweat,
its own metaphysics,
only, well, you have to keep on referring,
abstracting, theorizing and what have you,
otherwise you damn and blast
this flesh sleeping next to you,
this strange unshaven mush snoring beside you 
having snitched your embrace and your sperm.
                                                --
 
RAINY EVENING OF A FORGOTTEN POET,
MAYBE NAPOLÉON LAPATHIÓTIS
 
Yes, indeed, we must.  They are waiting for us.
Behind the window, erect and dignified,
the aged poets stand by, lest the front door bell rings.
What are they waiting for?  For whom?  Everyone and no one.
In anthologies they are sometimes presented as dead,
that they died five or ten years ago,
somewhere in the country.
The poets send letters,
retort, ridicule, threaten the anthologist,
accuse him of literary deficiency and calumny.
They receive a satisfactory reply,
promising to right the wrong once the first edition sells out
and they calm down.
Later on they treat the whole matter as a joke.             
 
“And to think that I’m in the process of writing my masterpiece,
those poofters will turn green with envy,
mark my words,
I’m younger than they, don’t listen to them,
my birthday is the day after tomorrow.  I’m reaching my teens.
I’m turning fifteen,
What presents will I get, I wonder?”
 
And suddenly they completely change.
They become a little girl with blond hair,
bosom trimmed with lace,
they become a naughty little boy
who steels sweets and picks his nose.
“So, shall we take a stroll?” they ask you.
“You did promise”.
 
Yes, of course, you say.  And they get ready.
They wear costly patent leather shoes,
silk shirts, load themselves with rings and chains.
 
“We shan’t be long,” they shout to the maid.
“If anyone calls, tell him to call back,
I’ll be back in a couple of hours,
make sure you write down his name,
you tend to forget these days, bye-bye.”
 
And they climb on your back.
Your legs give way.
Although they don’t weigh more than sixty kilos,
the burden is unbearable,
you carry time in a sack,
you tremble and collapse.
 
A pre-war song rings in your ears.
And -- how strange!  Whereas the sunset didn’t bode anything,
a fine rain begins to fall,
accompanying your conversation and your stroll
discreetly but steadily,
dissolving everything in love and memory,
people are outlined along the avenue,
it falls soaking your hair, your flesh.
It is embodied in your thought.
You become wholly rain.
 
“Let’s stop here, in the shed.
This unexpected rain spoiled our plans.
What bad luck!
Always, when it rains,
I feel as if someone is punishing me,
who or why I can’t say.
I’ve been aware of this ever since I was a child.”
 
They fall silent.  Time goes by.  They forget you.
Only the rain is heard falling on the shed.
 
“Shall we go back?” they ask.  “It doesn’t matter.
Besides, it’s up to you to describe to me
what we were supposed to see,
cinemas, theatres, soldiers,
the yellowed statues in the park,
those lucky creatures
foolish people consider lifeless
-- my, what smooth flesh, how youthful,
they take the mickey out of time,
and, above all, they are invulnerable,
the stabs of emotion pointless,
they have dealings with eternity,
that’s why you see them so self-sufficient,
yet they know me, I know them,
 
but what am I saying, I’ve digressed.
This is no time to get mixed up in metaphysics,
we’ve better things to do.
I always hated abstract ideas.
Now then
would you like some ouzo, a whisky, a soft drink?
I didn’t even ask you.
I’m sick and tired of the same people,
what people?  I’m referring to Cavafy.
He’s become a nightmare.  He sticks
like a leech on me.
He follows me wherever I go.  In the living-room,
where our family photos stagnate,
in the hall, the kitchen, when I’m broiling something,
even in the toilet.  He tags after me.
It’s overbearing.
I’ve become neurasthenic.
I swallow pills by the dozen.
Someone should have a word with him,
he must go, go, go, piss off.
Listen!  No, that’s not him.
It’s probably a mouse, if this wasn’t enough,
we also have mice.
And memory hanging like a vampire on my window.
 
All this writing paper, these poems, drafts,
letters of dead authors, visiting cards,
photographs of Zara Leander, her records,
all these I feel like opening the window
and throwing them out,
and let them melt into thin air,
all this waste, worthless stationery
if only it could become the body of a soldier or a sailor
-- I have a weakness for uniforms, forgive me,
that deep blue of theirs makes me feel
like I’m sailing --
if only it could become flesh, blood and veins,
what my poetry takes pride
in admitting,
arms, backs, private parts.
 
Ah, if only suddenly, without the bell ringing,
without a phone call,
my bedroom door would open
and for him to appear.  Him.
 
“I’m here,” he’d say.  Nothing more.  And undress.
Leave his beret on the chair
and slowly take off his shirt,
his trousers and his muddy boots.
And then say: “I’m bushed,
we did combat exercises today,
I just want to take a nap, and afterwards we’ll see.”
And then start softly snoring.
 
I -- ha, ha, I pulled a fast one on you! --
I’ll let him sleep,
I’ll bring the chair near his bed.
There’s that indefinable smell
of young flesh
(hormones, a doctor had told me);
one arm under his head,
the other on his genitals.  Unnecessary.
I expect nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.
Are you bored?  Well, yes, it’s getting late.
And taxis are not easy to find at this hour.
Next year again.  For sure.  Give me a call.
Yes, your poems are not bad,
I’ll find time to write you my impressions.
Cheerio.  And do read.  Read classical authors.
They are the alpha and the omega.
Let’s face it.  Without my classical education
I doubt if I’d have written such masterpieces.
So, bye-bye.
On your way out, make sure the door is shut tight.
Yes.  Yes.  Until next time, and soon I hope.
                                                --
 
I KNOW
 
I know, you are not used to caresses,
maybe you never caressed anyone,
you don’t even know how a hand is placed on the other’s nape
in remembrance of their being,
you never clasped me to your heart, as they say.
And if sometimes you do embrace me,
you nearly choke me.
But this in daytime -- amid the light’s embarrassment,
the bashfulness of everydayness.
When you move your pillow close to mine
your eyelashes heavy
from having carried all those tin pots at the building site
and on your shoulders falls honeyed light from your hair
or you become wholly azure
from your eyes’ sleepy blue,
then your subdued tenderness
surrenders like a soldier whose gun has rusted
and wants nothing but sleep and forgetfulness --
your fingers live their own life,
the candle flickers in the candlestick,
you slowly part your lips,
give me a love-bite
and truth wins you over at last.
                                                --
 
NATURALIZATION  
 
For donkey’s years I hadn’t even noticed them:
coffee shops next to the port with weather-beaten
oldsters playing their worry-beads
wrapt in thought,
the chairs much alike the oldsters’ souls
rickety, patient and worn,
gypsies passing by or asking for a glass of water
while looking at us with the eye of one
who daily tricks his fate,
robbing it of a few drachmas, tinny information,
death exchanges
and so forth --
in the parks negroes signed off ships
whispering words in an unintelligible language,
wizened women from the provinces looking
for a job in a factory,
so many beautiful scarred faces,
paring knives, pills and tattoos.
They move around me, around us,
with poisoned breath,
stench and irritating sweat,
living flesh.
I hadn’t even noticed them: you hid them from me.
Your love annihilated them in its glow.
Now your absence licks them fondly,
polishes the surfaces with care,
eliminates danger,
takes me in its arms and shows
the greyness of sorrow,
the humbleness of the needy,
the loneliness of the pudenda.
Your absence humanized me.
I became theirs.
     
     
DRUNKARDS     
 
Many people keep clear of them.  They smell, they say.
Their shirts, their chests, are soaked with booze,
their moustaches are sticky, heavy sweat
drips from their armpits, acrid, provocative,
lacking the fragrance of lentisk
afforded by your lover’s body.
By and large they are snubbed, or people fear
being stabbed in the ribs, just like that,
for no reason -- god, what ignorance!
I never avoided or abhorred drunks.
Wine purifies them, they become infants again,
Young giants who stammer, lean on you,
kiss you while searching for your tongue,
they humiliate themselves, lick your belly,
their socks stink, so what?
Hands rough and ignorant of such matters
seek to caress your nape, stroke your hair,
as if to make up for a wrongdoing
and begging forgiveness with closed eyes.
They surrender unconditionally.  Manly, honourably.
In their delirium they mistake you for someone else,
vows are exchanged, they snuggle in your arms
as if afraid you’ll leave them,
they totter to the toilet
and piss all over their trousers,
they vomit while holding your hand,
they shake their head back and forth,
they can’t stand the light, they close their eyes and nod off. 
A heavy, uneasy sleep.  Now they start snoring.
Everything in the room listens.
Who can this stranger be?  What are his rights?
I switch on the reading lamp.  I look: mouth half-open,
shoulders scratched.  Housebuilder?  Cabinet-maker?  Tiler?
Vomit’s paleness, complete abandon.
In the morning they get up groggy, a trifle downcast.
They ask for your name again, drink coffee,
apologise for dirtying the carpet
and arrange an indefinite meeting,
 
“yeah, the day after tomorrow, OK buddy, nine o’clock.”  
        
Some are taken in and believe
their luck has changed;
for years they’ve been waiting for this
and at long last it has arrived.
But I, not born yesterday, shake my head.
(What have we been learning all these years?)
Well, that’s it.
You’ll never see them again.
Angels have no memory,
a huge gap in their mind
shields them from hurt, from love,
a rose petal hovers dubiously
before fading away, swallowed by the dark.
They get in their lorries again,
shake out their wings to get rid of the earthly dust,
their flesh becomes softer and more susceptible,
they leave a false name on the sheets,
and if at any time they meet you in the street
they’ll look at you without guilt or remorse.
For a second they pucker up their brow
and pass on.
 
On Saturdays the port smells of Heaven.
A beam of light enters Hell,
don’t spurn it, my friends; it’s the angels
in a weird masquerade who pick
the most desperate of us, the most distrustful,
the most wretched.
                                                --
 
AFFECTION
 
You should be wary of affection.
It is dangerous --
though without fingernails,
though bathing each word in azure light,
don’t be fooled; it has other ways of taking vengeance.
It restrains.
Subjugates.
Casts nets
difficult to slip through.
I opt for the street hyenas
who ask you outright either for dough
or where you live, or to find them a broad,
 
whilst deaf-and-dumb affection nears you,
offers you a chair, Nescafé,
gives you its tattered sweater to wear,
buries itself under your blanket,
its Mongoloid eyes shine in your sleep,
in the morning it imposes its “good morning” coyly,
well-nigh slyly,
in a language other than the one you know,
with numerous pauses and queer coloration.
Dangerous it is.  You are out of your depth.
You don’t know what will come out of it, where it’ll lead to.
That’s why you should avoid it
where it teems:
 
in pissed negroes,
those past fifty,
those harbour loners,
in cafés where the jobless gather.
Rely on the safety of a straightforward give-and-take.       
                                                --
 
TATTOOS
 
I really like tattoos.
Even those uncomely, crude designs
which although they -- ostensibly -- depict a barebreasted mermaid
ready to have sex, they resemble more
an irascible moustached bloke from Máni,
a broad-shouldered macho
more inclined to stab someone than to give in.
Dragons also fascinate me:
their gorgeous posture just before pouncing on their victims,
before their tongues of flame make a bonfire of them --
Chinese dragons with steely wings, huge talons,
ruthless, grey-green, nightmarish.
Even “Nítsa” or “Mary, I love you”
have an effect on me.
I’ve made love kissing the boobs of some Mary,
fondling her big belly,
gently fingering
the ungraceful curves of her legs.
This, of course, turns seamen on.
As you are caressing, they flex their muscles
and give you the lowdown on the tattoo
-- done somewhere in San Francisco, by an old man,
or a slum and dangerous area in New York
after a knifing incident in a bar, etc., etc. --
and the room now fills with seawater,
soot, hash and hoarfrost,
oily-haired boatswains go up and down,
the walls are covered with pictures and nude girls,
someone is making Turkish coffee,
a couple are at it at the back, teeth clenched,
the water is sweeping me away,
I clutch tighter the anchor, the rose, and surrender.
Nítsa gives my touch her blessing (what else can she do?).
The guy next to me has lowered his eyelids.
His hairy arm under my head
slackens, leaves itself, floats in the sea.
The day after tomorrow he is flying to Hamburg.
                                                --
 
TEN P.M., CHRISTMAS DAY             
 
I heard a knock at the door.
It must be the Magi, I thought; the three Magi with their laurels.
Oh, what delight!  And I opened the door.  No one there.
I came out on the balcony.
There’s the star -- the stars, rather -- so many stars
with melodious names: Andromeda, Orion, so many.
One of them must belong to Christmas,
one of them through its distant skylight will have brought
snow, bagpipes and fleece,
as well as hopes and vows.
Sometime.  Everything changes, has changed,
now the night is warm, motorbikes go through it,
and that permanent lump in the throat.
Whatever happens, no matter how many years have gone by,
it punishes me for something that wasn’t my fault.
Years ago I learnt,
am an expert at reading people’s eyes.
This one and that one and the other,
the same pair of pincers grips their throats.
So, I’ll eat a small honey cake of loneliness with them,
we’ll light a candle to absent friends,
we’ll reflect on faded love affairs,
foxes will come out of their holes,
deer and wild animals out of their dens,
snow will fall on our hair and eyelids.
Kisses parched on our flesh
will scorch us again,
the Angel will come knocking at the old bedroom door,
he’ll leave his trumpet on the table,
he’ll slide under the blankets
to warm himself a little
before returning to his post across.
Honey from the past I’ll lick,
I’ll be a creature in love again,
maybe I’ll find you among them,
once again I’ll die with them,
in their solitude I’ll be reborn.  
 
THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL
 
Many races hang around the port.
To the indifferent or frightened eye they all look the same.
But once you familiarize yourself with their arms and armpits,
once you click your tongue after a kiss,
for someone so experienced, and maybe from the first touch,
their differences stand out in sharp relief:
Africans are child-like,
demanding, unruly and naïve.
They have an odd way of kissing, like licking.
Your lips are lost in their huge mouth.
Then again, Pakistanis are shy
and lymphatic, the poor sods.
Rarely do they appeal to me.
When you walk along a dark street
they hold your hand,
entangle their fingers with yours
as if asking for protection.
Sexier I find Iraqi seamen,
taller, well-knit, upright.  Handsome race.
Egyptians kiss passionately.
South Americans are good in bed,
and -- please note -- they like doing everything.
And there are others, and others.  So many races I’ve forgotten,
strange lands, geographically unknown to me,
their names lyrical, paradisiacal.
After kissing I got to know how poor they were,
deeper than any ethnologist I insinuated myself into their spirit,
their politics, even their finances.
Amazing what stories I heard about their homelands,
how many times we compared the cost of living,
how often I closed my eyes and saw
their father, their brothers and sisters, the rest of the family.
In conclusion: Don’t be racists.
They smell of sweat, you say (so what?),
they are infected with venereal diseases
(I was never infected by them,
I always caught the clap from Greeks),
you never know what’s in store for you
(the majority are honest, and stand speechless
admiring and touching your books).
In general, pay no heed
to those vacillating and funky buggers.
Ultimately, think of the gift 
of a free trip to a country
you vaguely recall from your geography class
in their privates, their kisses and their eyes.   
 
GOOD MEMORY
 
What does it matter if you found another embrace,
some woman’s warm bosom 
and weaved into her womb
there is nothing left for me,
neither a kiss nor a caress;
but now that you called me as you used to in the past,
your voice like broken glass,
I shivered,
gold melted in my kidneys,
I closed my eyes
and came memory to make up for the rest.                    
                                                --
 
OBITUARY
 
A bird on a branch explains eternity --
its colours, how many rivers flow through it.
But they who indulged in love affairs,
who drank, the fools, greedily from their glasses,
are unable to explain a fervent nostalgia     
having wasted their kisses,
they cannot explain how the police caught them
in the act,
that’s why we see them goggle-eyed
staring at us in newspapers,
when questioned they have nothing to explain,
they have no alibi,
and after eight months in the clink,
mornings or afternoons they write
various epitaphs or phone numbers
in filthy public lavatories.  
                                                --
 
AT LENGTH
 
At length, what hurts more?  Solitude?
Solitude that slowly but surely embitters you
letting its poison trickle
in your eyes?
Or is it love -- well, what they call love --
that crucifies you day after day
driving every second another nail into you;
that wipes the blood off without batting an eyelid;
that wraps you carefully in its shroud
stifling the voices,
covering everything with black, jet-black felt,
like Good Friday’s “It is finished…”
 
 Angelakis Andreas

Translated from the Greek
by Yannis Goumas