Yannis Ritsos-Poems, Selected Books, Volume II

Yannis Ritsos-Poems, Selected Books, Volume II

Exercises (1950-1960)

ΟΛΟΚΛΗΡΩΣΗ

Όταν εκείνη περπάτησε το χέρι της στο τριχωτό του στήθος

οι δυο γορθιές του ξέσφιξαν σα δυο μεγάλα κουκουνάρια στη φωτιά

έτοιμες να καούν και να χαϊδέψουν.

Εκεί πάνω τον πρόλαβε η σφαίρα. Δεν έβγαλε λέξη.

Οι δυο παλάμες του απομείνανε ανοιχτές. Τότε μονάχα

πιστέψαμε πως θα μπορούσε να νικήσει.

COMPLETION

When she touched his hairy chest with her hand

his two fists relaxed like two big pine cones in the fire

ready to burn and to caress.

That moment the bullet hit him; no word was heard.

His two palms remained open. Only then we believed

that he could be victorious.

Λιβαδειά, της Λήθης και της Μνημοσύνης

ΕΛΛΑΣ

Πέτρινα γεφύρια από την εποχή της Τουρκοκρατίας στεφανώνουν το διάσημο ποτάμι της Λιβαδειάς.

Στο κέντρο της Βοιωτίας κουμάντο κάνουν οι γυναίκες. Οι μούσες σε υποδέχονται στο βουνό τους και η νύμφη Ερκυνα στην πόλη της. Στον Ελικώνα δηλαδή και στη Λιβαδειά, την πόλη που ξέρεις τόσο καλά, μα ούτε… πώς γράφεται δεν ξέρεις!

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Dinah Roma, Consuming sorrow / Καταναλωτική λύπη

To Koskino

Why waste the rites
of lament when they can be
on show? Inside the pantry,
sorted out in cans, labeled
with fancy fonts. Each name,
a use. Or beside a vase of blooms,
magnificent in minutiae,
an exotic figure hand-picked
from a bazaar of all lost
and transported. Or let it
hang from your neck, the sheen
of gems guarding an order
of value, their shores and hills
polished after the silhouette of bone.
Or let a ring grasp the full
diameter of eternity in vows
engraved in indelible depth.

Its nature is solid. Its measure
is mass and volume. So let it stand
among your prized possessions.
Let it say: here, touch me,
don’t be afraid. This is not what
you’d bought into. This is simply
the foretold depreciation
of what possessed you.

ΚΑΤΑΝΑΛΩΤΙΚΗ ΛΥΠΗ

Γιατί να σπαταλάτε τις ιεροτελεστίες
του θρήνου όταν μπορούν να
επιδεικνύονται; Μέσα στο ντουλάπι,

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Swamped, a novel by Manolis Aligizakis

(Excerpt)

VII

       A week went by as normally as weeks usually did. Eteo concentrated on buying more shares of Platinum Properties. He had agreed to place half a million shares of its private placement with his clients, and he worked steadily on this with Logan. For the time being, he left Golden Veins to its own devices, and as a result the stock sat pretty well idle, with hardly any serious buying orders. Eteo had come to the point of agreeing with his son about Richard Walden and his company; they were a lost cause. The only problem was to find a way to unload the stock and save as much of his clients’ money as he could.

Looking back, he could only remember one case when Richard had made Eteo’s clients serious money. This was when the promoter got involved with a group of American clients who were novices in the VSE. They had an option to drill an oil field in southern Texas, and when they came to town, they got introduced to Richard for some strange reason. At that time he was running a small shell company called Grand Fusion Explorations, and after somehow managing to sign an option of his own, he conned the Americans into bringing a large number of their contacts into the game, knowing very well that all the action was doomed to finish in two or at the most four weeks. Luckily Eteo managed to unload half a million shares that he had purchased for between 25 and 40 cents at over a dollar and a half on average.

There had been some good times back then when these short-term fliers started from pennies and sometimes reached one or two dollars before they dropped again. Smart shareholders who knew the right time to sell could make a good killing. Of course there were also shysters who came up from the States and conned unsuspecting Vancouver investors into games with no exit, appearing and disappearing like comets. Eteo remembered one fellow in particular, a tall man who dressed in cowboy boots and hat, who came to Vancouver once every eighteen months to two years, always bringing what he called the deal of the century and with only a flyer or a poster in his briefcase, which he went around showing to every stockbroker he could get a meeting with and insisting the deal was a sure thing. Often this was enough to spark a fire among the duller, more naive young brokers. Some went out of their way to get involved, only to be burned. Some even came back for more in the forlorn hope of making up some of their previous losses. Eteo had met a lot of these shady promoters over the years. They were all scum, simply put, yet they were who they were, and after all, he reflected, it was each man for himself in this game. So Eteo himself was often prepared to go along with a play to a certain degree as long as he could see how to get out and how to skim some gravy from the top of the cake before it was totally eaten leaving behind only empty dreams and schemes.

His mind was full of such thoughts one morning when he found himself stuck on the Second Narrows Bridge in bumper-to bumper-traffic that moved only a few inches at a time. At least the view was beautiful, he told himself. It was a sunny Monday and the shimmering sea and gleaming mountains brought a smile to his face despite the frustrating traffic jam. By then he had succeeded in investing a good number of his clients in Platinum Properties. Today he planned to visit Platinum’s offices and talk to the directors. His positive mood was marred by one negative thought: he was quite exposed now, with the new purchases and those for the regular traders, like Herbert, who loved to  trade on the cuff, as they called it, buying on credit and taking a few days to settle their accounts, a few days that sometimes became a few weeks or even longer if they found they couldn’t raise the funds or, in some cases, had planned from day one not to pay outright but instead to wait and settle the bill with the anticipated profits from selling the very same shares.

Yannis Ritsos-Poems, Selected Books

Yannis Ritsos-Poems, Selected Books

ΑΝΑΚΟΜΙΔΗ

Στ’ αγκάθια της φραγκοσυκιάς κλωστές απ’ τα ρούχα των σκοτωμένων.

Παραθυρόφυλλα χτυπούν στο πέλαγος. Τζάμια σπάνε.

Ακούγονται σφυρίγματα πλοίων. Σαββατόβραδα στις ταβέρνες.

Μια γροθιά που χτυπάει το τραπέζι. Πέφτουν τα ποτήρια.

Κατάστιχα, λογαριασμοί, τα κοιμισμένα αγόρια, οι λυπημένες λέξεις.

Γυναίκες έρχονται με σκούπες, μαζεύουν τα γυαλιά, φεύγουν.

Απέραντο, ακατοίκητο λιμάνι, επιπλέονταν λεμόνια, κλειστό τελωνείο

κι ο κοχλασμός του νερού σε μια γκαζιέρα στ’ άδειο ναυτικό υπνωτήριο.

Πώς μ’ ένα παίξινο βλεφάρου, μ’ ένα τίποτα ανασυγκροτείται ο κόσμος.

Disinterment

Threads from clothes of the dead on the thorns of prickly pear trees

Shutters pounding in the pelagos Windowpanes break

Whistles of ships are heard Saturday nights in the taverns

A fist that hits the table The glasses tip off

Account books calculations the sleepy boys the sad words

Women with brooms come and sweep the glass fragments

             they leave

Immense uninhabited harbor lemons floating the closed up

              customs office

and the water’s bubbling on a stove in the vacant sailor’s dormitory

How with an eyelid’s flutter with nothing the world is

              reconstructed