Dimítris Kalokýris
From: The Wharf (1984)
The Eyes' Dark Spots
to liberate the water
from the water-
melon's fragrant gift,
seeking collections, opportunities.
Since today
that the word's fee is the law
and the cause of man who falls silent
is silence,
desperate your life clutches hold of this sign
for it recalls nothing else in the world
other than this syllabic orchard
where whispering you scratch with the mind
and on the apple tree's branches blossom words
that spread their spikes suddenly in the light
as far as the deep black, hypnotised butterfly
of your eyes.
THE WORLD of course is now different,
and its tongue is unclothed
passed between everyone's teeth;
yet even if within it, as they say,
the word
designs infinity's fabrics
swiftly in this way
so that it doesn't manage even to choose the moment
between the thread and the knots tying it
after all what do you think the poet is:
one who stays awake gazing at visions
or a merchant
who leans back on his chair
and swats flies waiting
waiting for some golden fate to come
with the customer's clothes?
PLACES of your presence deserted
left to the Celts and Catalans
who pass irrigating the soil with ink
— a silent cavalerie that saw daybreak
tormenting the strange body of Calypso,
in Circe's cellars —
and forms the suspensions of divination
the banks and sudden bends of the river Axios
with the trinkets and adverbs
the implements of the humble and unworthy,
who constantly concocts the inscrutable
in the images unmade by hand, of sleep.
Translated by David Connolly
Page(s) 79-80
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