Kornaros's Classic Poem in Longhand by (an 12-year old resident of Crete) Manolis Emmanuel Aligizakis
Greek Canadian Literature Libros Libertad Manolis Aligizakis
SOMETIMES the house overflew of expectation and
we had no place to stand; then we went out to the world,
crying like the first time, while, far away, the horizon with
its intense abandonment hid us inside the secret, until
at night a harp was heard from the uninhabited house.
It was the time of the great dreamer who has never
disappeared for eons, yet always walks toward oblivion.
VI
Meditative
her heavy breast
inside the mirror
VII
Again I dress myself
in the tree’s foliage
and you bleat
VIII
Night the wind
separation
spreads and undulates
IX
The young Fate
Naked woman
the pomegranate she broke
was full of stars
X
Now I raise
a dead butterfly
without any make-up
XI
How can you put together
the thousand little pieces
of each person?
The Bait
A long-time deckhand on
the Gigantic adventurous
trawler traversing over
the huge waves of Alaska
waters, dry maple tree leaf
tossed around by merciless
winds, dry leaf blown over
a lump of soil eroding, shifting,
kneading, morphing, molding
new schemes and images,
new dreams like Rob’s who
traveled the ups and downs
of a fisher’s life hardly reaching
the mere length of a line, affording
a simple life, a pack of beer,
fisher like a fish hooked on a hardened
hook of unknown fishers
anchored like a heavy metal
fastened onto a blob in the depths
of an ocean reaching as far as
the length allotted to him
by a hook keeping the bait
ready to dare the fish’s bite
such as Rob’s life, hooked
as a bait daring Hades to bite
and perhaps swallow him and perhaps
gulp him like an ocean fish
gulps its bait only that Rob
was to be weighted on the scale
of the perennial tyrant, like
an increment, a statistic
of the annual catch, Rob,
the bait who never dared to break
his line and run around the sea’s
gleaming reflections just
like another free fish, Rob,
the bait, challenging Hades
to a historic duel, one winner,
always the taker, one winner
who has never been the bait.
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 