Háris Vlavianós
From: Implacable Refutation (1989)
With Your Eyes and a Metaphor
In control of your absence:
White petals
Green stone
Your fingers frozen sorrow.
First memory...
Rain, rain
Poplars along the river edge
And the languid boat for Trinity's ardent rower-lover.
Then loss and fall.
Second memory...
Among the visions of an expiatory liturgy
Rises the oracle of the destruction:
Of all this beauty something must remain.
The phallic size of a biblical 'I'
Would lead no doubt to the wrong conclusion.
Yet what single image can define this passion of mine?
To be consumed in the pursuit of a bodiless form
Is an indication of terror, or...?
You are right: I still feel pain in my amputated arm.
Writing the language of love means
Writing not the history of that language
But the archaeology of its silence.
These words express nothing
My only consolation
The sweet deception of this written confession.
Selecting the signs
Of a funeral oration
I suppress you.
Therefore you exist.
Translated by Jackie Willcox and Háris Vlavianós
Page(s) 156-157
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