Pavlína Pamboúdi
From: Postcards (1980)
The sender is fine. On a pointless mission. These laconic post-
cards keep arriving. Views of places you have certainly seen
before somewhere. In a different arrangement. No indication of
whereabouts. Nothing meaningful at all. Increasingly vague. Until
this suspect, sketchy communication abruptly ceases.
Yet I keep struggling to save myself as
Between place and postscript
Real time blows
And erases.
V
Then the giant Nanny comes, wearing hooks for hands and feet.
She climbs up and lies on her back on the flat roof. Her swollen
body spreads out like pap. It grows dark. Protectively.
I am sitting quietly in the drawing-room.
In my comfortable head.
Thumbing through something. There:
I recognise that half-girl in the photograph.
Nineteen sixty six. Hmm...
Afterwards, as I remember,
I had a terrible shock and became two.
One of me spends the winter
(And it is always winter) in hibernation
The other writes.
X
Can you see the ancient theatre in the background?
The sky is a jellyfish lasciviously pulsating.
In the zinc twilight, on the zinc table,
the Devil is playing. Solo.
Predicting my moves
Unto the third generation.
XVIII
To be responsible. Even without doing anything. There's no
question of accepting the latest diagnosis.
Life is indisposed.
In the condemned cell by accident,
Or, they've been deceiving us.
Anyhow I'm here keeping an eye on it
A night nurse.
Occasionally applying the motions
Of artificial breathing to my paper.
Watching the serum in the water-clock.
I can of course withdraw.
There's a cord hanging round my throat.
If it feels any worse, it will pull on it.
Translated by Christopher Robinson
Page(s) 87-88
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