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Agenda

Vol. 36 No 3-4
Greek Poetry: New Voices and Ancient Echoes

Spring 1999

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Pavlína Pamboúdi

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From: The Eye of the Fly (1983)


Don't be frightened of me, don't frighten me 
I am 
You are still here. 

Guard and entrapped. 
What am I guarding and from whom?
I shall be robbed 
By deaths, Death, History 
That window with the view 
That will not exist till I am there 
Tearing apart within it. 

Hush. 
The house is all eyes, all ears 
All agitation. 
It has ghostly visions 
It contracts and expands. 
It has uncontrollable powers, the walls — 
The walls 
Converge on infinity. 

The walls define my limits — 
And all the elements 
Perpendicular and metaphysical 
That by some perverse interpretation 
curve the house round 
Into an ellipse, yes 
It's my egg. A symbol 
An abstract mathematical concept 
In which I 
Am an internal tangent. 

You distract me 
From Never and Nowhere. 
You deceive me and conceal yourself. 

I nest and sprout 
And live my mineral existence 
Transformed into a quadruped table — 

You, a Prophet 
Half-mad, deaf 
With moth-eaten beard, 
Are to withdraw 
Into the desert of the room, 
Incomprehensibly 
Threatening in a dead language, 
Incomprehensibly 
Threatened in a computer language. 

And I, Lilith, 
Planet and witch; 
Being tortured 
In an unstemmable haemorrhage of time — 
I, an ancient alchemist 
With the acids. 
Of my desperation. 

Or a tree. Or 
Flora of the intestines. 
In my slow movement draining 
The small desires 
which have come to fruition — 

I think I am going mad, 
Quietly, dispassionately. 
In my head, 
An ectoplasmic glow 
From an empty screen. 
The association of intermittances 
An alternating current. What am I doing 
In this haunted house 
With its programmes — 

What do you expect — 

Time is blackmailing me. 

It knows nothing about us — 

And yet, as if pushed I get through the day 
And night too, 
Anxious to suddenly turn 
Inside out from the Black Hole 
And be born. 

[...] 
Watch out, 
The eye of the fly 
Arranges the edible 
World differently. 

I'm going blind. 
This other vision deceives me 
With the negatives of things 
On the retina 
And upside-down 

The Word's invisible aspect attracts me 
And is attracted 
Nullifying its own weight unaided 
But how — 

And the heavens 
Are an impenetrable shelter 
For an open nothingness. 
And the mesh of words.
 
You have no aim. No 
End in view. 
The analogies are random 
And words 
Are like pebbles. 
Only a probability 
That the right one will ring out 
In this life, among the thousands — 

But I don't have time. 
Well-tried diseases black and white 
Are close. 
They'll fall madly in love 
With the body which will 
Change scent and shape. I pay them. 
They'll annihilate me 
Because I deeply desired them. 

As for you 
You'll die first. 
The soul and its nitrogen 
Is a volatile essence. 

You have no piety. 
You're part of this mystery 
Even if you attack it 
From the unprotected side 
Where I am not. 

From sleep's inaccessibility 
From the vertigo of the helix 
To the symphyses of memory, 
Universal memory — 

What do you remember and where — 

I remember. When I'm absent in sleep, 
I replace 
One of our ancestors. 
An amoeba, a trilobite 
A shallow pulse in the volume of waters. 
Something many-sided and inert 
That dreams of 
Unconfessed chemical loves. 

I forget. These black marks on the paper 
Absorb me more and more 
As they multiply. 
Bearing whips, with eyelashes, 
Sprouting tails and antennae, 
Long-lived 
Industrious and vengeful. 

And my nature 
Escapes me.
[...]

Translated by Christopher Robinson

Page(s) 89-92

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