Maria Skoularíkou Panoútsou
SALUADE
Translated from the Greek by the poet Yannis Goumas
*
to Mark Court
Moonlight.
A bird perched on a branch.
The man under the branch listens to a cricket.
My childhood friends have aged today.
ADIEU A
Nothing brighter than your image.
I remember you, your eyes half-shut, dear one.
Your chest all white
and the flames of your eyes, a sorrow.
Dreams are often a repeat performance
of my arriving in a metropolis with narrow, sloping streets,
much like shadows on our lips, on nights at Covent Garden.
Trampled flowers along the pavement
remind me of the cheap Italian wine,
after leaving the Chinese restaurant for uncertain formalities.
O you, god of love!
We spent our nights on borrowed beds
caressing and crying all night long.
Oh how I loved our own flesh and blood,
and we cried together and alone,
together and again alone.
We lived, what we dreamed of.
You were a bright star in the acts of God.
And now, on the damp streets of dawn,
childhood’s spittle on your grey head
censed the cold air, and you remember
the time I held your fingertips or the hem of your blouse
to prevent me from slipping on the curb.
ADIEU B
Your handwriting or your knitted brows
before they ease, take me back.
The movement of your pelvis: the most beautiful ever seen.
Your hand, held to your belly,
or your whistling, as you gingerly walked up the stairs,
like a bird about to fly.
The thought of our encounters is harrowing.
So keep to the city’s outskirts.
And your figure is wedged into the swaying cerebellum,
and memory, a lecherous rattle, brings you as a censer.
At the end of the garden you planted jasmine,
and on the bathroom’s shelf tea rose.
On those nights the gods gathered on the one pillow.
While still asleep, saliva dribbled from your mouth into mine.
Bury your anxiety, all are figments of my imagination.
You, far away, are blissfully protected.
One lonely evening as my heart was writing verses,
I saw a dream.
THE DREAM
I saw that I had passed over,
one night when a sallow moon
saw me shedding tears of love.
It kept on changing shapes.
I stalling and it preserving its shine
till dawn, waiting
for us to go together beyond the firmament.
Then my impetuous dress rushed out into the street
along with the ghosts and mice.
The wise owl came after me,
hooting for me to get back.
What a frightful call reached my sides!
What a beat stronger than a heartbeat!
It takes long to forget.
And the sky covering me is now unrecognizable.
I’ll leave, I thought, I’ll go to him.
And I reached the moon.
QUIET VOYAGE
The moon on the street made a pothole of its body
and with quick movements embroidered a cocoon.
This it used to cover me entire, as spiritual things
kept calling me to them.
First stop, a small circle of fire.
As the flames licked the darkness,
the moon was transformed into a man.
He looked like all other men I had fallen in love with.
He clasped me in his arms, and we ****** each other.
We went deep and deeper still into the fiery disc.
With throbbing movements our bodies
passed through the fire
and onto a placeless place in the form of white,
luminous dust.
I woke up when my arms had become
knobbed branches, my legs
cobwebs, and my hair cubes of chestnut leaves.
My eyes stones, my ******* swings, and my entire
skeleton a ladder for divine, wingless birds,
and I no longer knew where I was.
Then the moon came to me quietly again, and I
once more went into ecstasies of balance on its back.
I started kissing it. I kissed it all the way,
and my fingers penetrated into its cell mass.
It left me on a home seashore, on top of a rock, while it,
a shadow of its former self,
dived into the frozen waters and disappeared.
ADIEU C
This time of night only a few cars are still on the roads.
At street corners: garbage and cats.
You’ve been away from me for years.
I become a shadow of your thought,
like the wind that in the dark
passes through the cracks and comes uninvited.
In your memory’s circle I’m also like a May wreath,
placed above your bed,
and I am burdened with monastic indulgence
and shallow seas and lagoons.
We were born in a golden cage,
hearing balalaikas and seeing dances,
thus you showered me with divine chestnut
gifts from head to toe.
But whoever hasn’t lived on earth,
can’t remember the evening clouds.
Now I offer my ******* to your two hands, so let us stay
right here, as on a Saturday, a day of rest, joy, day one.
How many times didn’t I call women
from other hours to take me
with them to quieter countries.
My limbs have become museums
for loved men and women.
When the sun rises again,
don’t ask it what you asked yesterday.
Get on a horse and go to earthen
graves before you are one with
roses, raisins, feathers, oils,
pine needles and fig milk….
It’s autumn, and
I had hoped to see you
passing in the distance.
The letters are neatly
stacked in the box of pebbles,
on top of which the fan.
Let everything rest as we say goodbye.
Io, mourns alone in the castle keep,
accustomed to ancient laws.
One last look at the large bedroom
and the narrow bed next to the window.
HESIONE
Shut in her room with the scent of roses
pounded with wet stones
picked one by one from the riverbank and shining still,
Hesione struggled to remove the clasps
which she placed on a piece of cloth weaved by her grandma.
Days later she lay in bed wrapped in a sacred vestment.
Secret hopes torpedoed her body
and for a moment removed the clasps from the groin.
All worthless.
People were buried nearby.
The freshly-dug graves smelled of tamarisks.
She and the Thoans scanned the sea.
Nothing reminded one of who she was and why she mourned.
She forgot all about Hercules, thurifications and joys never to be.
Now all worthless.
Hesione: daughter of Laomedon, king of Troy, and sister of Priam.She was chained by her father on a rock to be
devoured by a monster in order to appease the anger of Apollo and Poseidon. Hercules promised to deliver her, for a reward of Laomedon’s wonderful horses, and killed the monster.
REFUSAL
Throw the weak days away
for them to fight with vultures and win,
for all to be done quickly and brightly
like the most brilliant stars,
like the white nights,
when loves die and in the morning lovers split
with a pain between the eyes, between the ribs.
You and I shall fight together with
pleasures and appeals,
transient and futile changes.
The love I forsook to be with you first and alone,
doesn’t wait for the moon to rise
and retaliate for my deed.
I must be going now, before you realize t
hat I don’t really exist,
that I’m only light
casting its cells for the last time
on a human face.
MEMORY
The wind passed through the trees’ foliage.
Sandy, remote corners of no-man’s land.
Pine trees’ truncated branches.
A glance stands against every lover,
and yet last night I heard our song
as the full moon rounded the sky
and ever since passion instils twilight and dawn on my windows.
All is damp, and the wicker chair a trap.
I sought to fall in with the lines on the horizon,
and monstrous conches tattooed your face
on my white arms.
A seagull won’t be saved by sea food,
but from your hand, as you feign throwing
breadcrumbs slowly on the whitecaps.
OCCURRENCES
The ball of wool rolled beyond the hills and a cautious dog sniffed at it, ears drooping, like a gull resting on a briny wooden beam washed by the sea all day.
In the middle of the road corn undulated in the wind, and beyond stretched the sea. The nights all quiet in the last years of rainy glimmer. It was at this time that the corpse came to the front door of an old house and the windows rattled.
Then people, like a multicoloured incubus, turned their backs and took the alluring road of night.
The children came out of their homes and ran laughing through the back streets. In the hullabaloo so passed Carmen, neatly dressed. Her skirt was embroidered with crescent moons, and behind, for a belt, a trimmed mantilla, a tiny nest for lilliputian birds.
PORTRAIT
The black dress lying on the wooden floor.
Sweaty hands, earlobes frosted over.
You are incapable of mastering her unruly *******.
I see men’s eyeballs
adjacent to the outer world.
I look at the lips smeared with spittle,
the steaming nostrils, the bitten nails.
The bloated bodies have tightened the wedding rings.
The soles stretch heavily. All movements slow-footed.
Dead calm.
SISYPHUS
Man discovered his image on the lakes and was amazed.
At night, when the others had gone,
he ran in secret to see this face again
on moonlit waters, shivering all over.
I, too, a child of Sisyphus, search for my image in those
shining eyes hurrying by.
As they keep their eyelids shut, dry without the flow of tears
that bring messages of hope, I pour out short words, since
the lakes now seem far away, while the rivers and seas
no longer reflect my mien and colour.
----
Love awaits me in your abyssal-like black armpit,
in your intimate parts, intoxicated by your fluids.
But for a couple of moonbeams below the brow, your countenance is dark.
Once I dreamed of art, now I study the art of love,
how to weave shoals in dreams at night.
I approach you with lascivious movements, and before me, one and only,
you lead me, at long last, to beauties and thoughts.
I really do look inhuman
standing as I am so far from you,
leaving you to look at me thoughtfully.
THE VOYAGE
The winding road I kick,
as a motionless stork in its nest.
On the ground chickens are hatching eggs
and ***** with their early crowing
recite a melody.
Breathless rose petals lie on my *****.
I walk on the red earth
and triumph follows me tracing muddy lines.
I belong to the generation that didn’t experience war.
On paintings and in books we came to know of sorrow,
O you, valiant ones!
And we, our lives plucked clover.
And the acacias look lonely, but not without a swarm of bees!
Up till now, my food was sprinkled with a deadly dust,
and Mary from Egypt shows me the Alexandrian grapes!
----
Everything amassed in the driver’s look.
Konstantínos or Dimítrios or Nikólaos or
Aléxandros.
Tríkala-Athens Athens-Tríkala. The others around me are dozing;
the road alone keeps me company.
I saw lots of people in the village that evening.
The half-dark, half-lighted street hid a corpse.
They are lacerating the oceanic limbs of my beautiful beaux,
men I spent nights with, struggling in their embrace to uproot victory.
The stories from one thousand and one nights wanted me alone to stay awake!
STORY WITH AN END
I’ll tear up the paper and go back in history.
When I still hadn’t met you, in Columbus’ time.
For your sake I combed my hair, did the washing,
dried hankies and watered the hyacinth.
On the door hangs the cloth of expiation.
It’ll become dusty with time, and the junk dealer will charge for it as much as for a quick cup of coffee.
TURN
Turn round. There I am.
Next to the chair, by the stove.
On the first stair, at the slightly open door
that as you go to shut it, it shrinks back
and remains open.
I let you go
relying on what freedom?
The world is full of bodies,
mine, you’d say, was the enslavement of your soul.
And you with this face, only pressed to a woman’s breast
can I forget the yearning that sews me.
It was raining that summer, I recall.
I was aged twenty and you fifteen.
IN BRIEF
Flames are flaring the end is near
And you, far off, were thinking of me and touching your chest.
We here cannot hear the river boat’s whistle
bringing us tidings.
We await your return why is the truce delayed
and devilish, light-coloured time presses us
for pillow talk.
Come back your presence is needed
your gentle hands convey
life’s desires bound to end, and who knows
when we’ll find Pandora’s box
The back room bears the odour of your body.
Scattered newspapers are yellowing like autumn leaves.
Here and there I make out letters. Your love letters
written in the same alphabet.
REPORT A
The velvet armchair’s pleats have changed shape.
The stitches, tiny loose openings over the worn calico.
An apple on the soiled material,
and all around light from the candle you just lighted.
The house is packed with people.
Delicious food and coloured drinks.
There’s no silver or gold or myrrh,
only your plain and proper gestures sap everydayness.
REPORT B
I’ll start again from the first footprints,
the first nail scratches.
Sand-hewn swirls surrounded by spume.
On high, winged things pillory the truth.
Would that a wish rinsed human nature,
and the body of clay emitted bars of gold
of devotional gifts.
My short skirt hides my groin, snow
-white and plump,
with fine pink folds, soft and damp,
with a dripping light.
The soles’ throbbing beats time, restless beat
by pacing to and fro along the pavement.
Let us all together pitch into the waking
sound,each one a dead drunk Lazarus.
On the table a slice of bread cut by
an unknown hand,
and a jug of water standing in motion.
REPORT C
The last days went by without your fiddling
with the creases on my ******,
your running up the stairs to grab my leg
on the last but one stair. I hold my hips still,
but no hips, hidden or not, escape you,
and now you squeeze me on your legs.
The smell of spilt ink has become one with the wind.
You’ll rediscover it as a cloud, a little darker
than the brown armchair.
Stubbornly surd, it drives you there to spend your life
in the companyof thieves, liars, persons dishonest,
lecherous, insane.
What is it that remained endless and
condemned me to write,
throughout my life, fairy tales for me to read?
