Dimítris Kalokýris
From: Controversial Points (1995)
Ode to the Twentieth Century
WE ARE, OF COURSE, antiquities of the future.
And from a future that appears unexpectedly desolate
dotted with magnetic storms that will erase
word by word, in a flash, the Law's constitutions,
A woman I see faraway laughing on the screens
rising in a nasal laugh, almost passionately gleaming
weighed down with digital ex-votos
to give me a guided tour of the musical antiquities to come.
A woman daubed in invisible colours:
White voice, like humidity and traffic overtaking
along arteries of an artificially inflamed blood
diffused in the frothing effervescent drinks, quarrelsome
with scratches and sparks sweeping the extreme actions
in brackish crystals
of perspiration irrigating the infra-red lips
the insatiable gaze of the unviewed lover
sinking in her toxic — adolescent — plumage,
A woman dressed in flashy scents:
spurious jewel, without race or language,
light-consuming paradox, super-sonic cloud
in the future's hive an amber chrysalis
rhythmically gnawing at night's cherry
and in the illuminated depths of the nets fishing
for the spasm's silk — like a cool firework
sparking the Annunciation of the next century.
A woman surrendered to indeterminate bodies.
II
RICH-THRONED ARPEGGIO, mechanical dancing girl,
starry song plant, fruit-bearing aurora
with fearless face you gaze upon us one by one
struggling with the century's armed sorties
a gilt, fertile (formerly) youth
crowding before the gates:
Who'll be last out.
And like a muse champion of celestial accountants
you, a general of cherubical astral hosts,
immaculate, you should have seen that everything in the world
pencilling, margins, ethereal Venices
with three-masted channels, televiewed aspects
Zero glowing in vibrations and swords
syllables should have waved in the summer's antenna
radiant tropical words proceeding to the centre
and you should have set colours, versification of the invisible
with language's anarchy in absolute attraction
the vowels yellow and the consonants white
the long ones glaucous and the short bright blue
circumflexes pink and acute accents violet
on the pitch-black biennials with red-figure punctuation
visible casts of a perpetual body
that sparked the whisper in flashes of waves.
Let these be our works.
For the poet's job, ladies and gentlemen,
is, after all:
To colour the skies.
Translated by David Connolly
Page(s) 84-85
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The