not because they die
of heart failure or cancer
but because on their eyelids sprout
horrendous flowers...
Yannis Varveris
My Head
No verse belongs to me. My friends operated them all on.
My upright friends Brassens and Ferre. And the others.
And this is no head, it’s hate.
And mum’s plastic lilies I laid at the Polytechnic gate.*
This is no head that doesn’t know a bow from an arrow.
Not even killing would be a pleasure
I wouldn’t know what weapon I used.
This is no head that smokes
strips of belly dancers
flesh and bones of ideas and wiles away the time.
So I took a chisel and gave it the works
fought the good fight at last
shod in shabby sandals, no socks, and resolute curly hair.
But still my verses are unreadable;
inside and out all my poems
are zebra-striped and I the warder.
As outside so inside I found
the mote of Sartre
in their eyes
and in my eyes I found the same wolf
suckling without consuming me.
What more can a poem need
than thread through the needle’s eye
• in fact at night my room is full of threads –
even Homer managed it, I muse;
but where’s the needle that will prick my languid temples?
*Alludes to the uprising of the students of the National Technical University in November 1973, which was quelled by the military junta.
Hostia
There’s the house.
Around, mum’s water plants
blossoms for the bosom.
In the freezer some jolly little snakes
enabling me to change tongue
each time I vanquish flesh.
We should visit living poets
We should visit living poets
especially if we happen to dwell in the same town
drop in on them from time to time
because as we spend our quiet lives
certain that they too are alive – though maybe forgotten –
we hear the sad news.
Good poets pass away one day
not because they die
of heart failure or cancer
but because on their eyelids sprout
horrendous flowers.
At first they delve in medical books
then they consult the optician
ask botanists and gardeners
science gives up
offers vague cautious words
passersby and neighbours cross themselves.
Thus the poets gradually withdraw
to the seclusion of their homes
listening to old records
writing little
less and less
mediocre stuff.
Meantime in this confinement
the horrendous flowers begin to wilt
and wither
and the poets no longer go out
not even to the nearby kiosk for cigarettes.
They sit shrunken by the fireplace
seeking answers from the fire
which eventually throws out a spark
first landing on the dry petals
then on the dry stems
all over the body
and the entire house
the surroundings
brighten for a single moment
and they are burnt to ashes.
(translated from Greek by Yannis Goumas)
