Jazz with Ella

excerpt

“And Lona probably knows there’s something going on,” said David, “’cause she was up on deck this morning, too.”
“It doesn’t have to be a big cloak and dagger issue,” Paul said. “I’ll just announce to the authorities—maybe Ivan Nikolaevich or Natasha—that I want to defect to the Soviet Union. It happens. They’ll be delighted.” He rattled on, calmed by the acquiescence. “At first, they’ll think I’m a spy. I’ll have to prove I’m not. Then I figure we can get on with living.”
Jennifer felt a fresh wave of anger. “How naïve are you? Of course they’ll think you’re a spy, a plant. You’ll be interrogated, maybe sent away. You don’t get it. All this first class treatment we’ve been getting is for visitors, not for citizens. Listen”—he was waving her away—”in Leningrad I met a Cuban, a musician, who opted to move here. You think they gave him an award? Put him in an orchestra? No. He’s now living in a condemned slum with a 10-rouble-a- week job sweeping floors. That’s what will happen to you.”
Paul sat down on the bunk with a sudden thump, his knapsack at his feet. “No, they wouldn’t do that—they wouldn’t break us up. And they wouldn’t mistreat me. I’m still a Canadian citizen.”
“Like I said, how naïve are you? You could see the inside of a Soviet jail for a long time while they’re deciding what to do with you.”
Paul fidgeted nervously, the bravado gone from his face.
Jennifer went on, “Think about Vera. She’ll come under scrutiny, too…her family, her whole life will become uncomfortable.”
David cleared his throat. “I hate to say this, bucko, but she’s right. I remember when I was here in ‘68 one of the Italian exchange students—a real Romeo—fell for Masha, a mathematics student. Whoo, she was hot stuff, but none of us poor adolescents could get near her. Only her Romeo. Anyway, he opted to stay in the country and that’s the last we saw of him.”
Paul’s face had turned grey. “What do you mean?”
“He just quietly disappeared. When we asked the teachers about him, some of them actually pretended they didn’t know who we were talking about. My professor—he was a good guy—gave me a straight answer, or as close to a straight answer as you’ll get here. He said that Romeo was being re-settled. That was his word, ‘re-settled’. He didn’t look too happy when he said it.”
“So what does it mean?”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Blood, Feathers and Holy Men

excerpt

Captain Hjálmar sent several men with rope halters to gather the remaining
sheep before they disappeared into the forest. Older members of the crew were sent
to scout for fresh water and whatever foods might be readily collected. He remained
with three armed men to keep an eye out for Skraelings or whatever inhabitants
there might be, friendly or not. His lieutenant, Bjorn, had torn a shoulder muscle
when the ship went aground and so he took up a lighter duty to allow the swollen
shoulder to heal. He took a basket to search for late berries or fall fruit of any kind.
Over the rocks, where the vessel had first gone aground, huge yellow-headed gannets
swooped down for pieces of sheep flesh that swirled in the eddying pools, while
clown-faced puffins in monastic robes with bright beaks and stubby wings bobbed
up and down on the seething water snatching bits of this and that. Clouds of colourful
ducks flew out from shore, grabbed at morsels and flew back again.
Grubbing for edible berries, Bjorn had first discovered a few remaining cranberries
in a sandy bog close to the beach. Just what the crew needed after weeks of salt
meat and fish. It was common knowledge among Norse seamen that Torstein the
White had reported healing the bleeding gum sickness, skybyjugr, scurvy, with apples,
pears, lemons, and muscatels following a voyage between Thulé and Nörge.
Bjorn sensed that other bitter fruit could heal the bleeding gums he and several
members of Captain Hjálmar’s crew were suffering from weeks at sea.
He had climbed a hill to find a few overripe blueberries whose sweetness could
offset the bitterness of the red fruit. Standing up to stretch, Bjorn was startled by
the loud cry of a naked girl child. He called out to her that he’d not hurt her. There
were two children, wild eyed and bronzed by the sun. Bjorn missed his own babies,
waiting for him in far off Nörge. He remembered their tears when he was called away
once more to sea, and sighed.
Soon his bucket was almost half filled with red berries, a few blueberries and wild
grapes. Bjorn made his way back to the encampment on the sandy beach. Two sheep,
killed by jumping overboard onto the rocks, turned slowly on a single spit above the
campfire. Already, men stripped and split logs felled from the woods for planks to
repair the damaged prow and hull. Hugall The Thoughtful carved a new dragon’s
head. He was assisted by Ungr, youngest member of the crew, who demonstrated his
skill as a painter, using the juice of cranberries, blueberries, dock leaves, and various
barks for pigment to bring all Hugall’s carvings to brilliant life.
Not wishing to distract the crew from tasks at hand, Bjorn decided to say nothing
of the children on the hill.
Had the children gone home by their normal route through the adjoining meadow
land, they’d have seen more strange creatures, as the monk-thralls Berach and
Brógán, guarded by Freki, stood watch over the eighteen sheep to keep them from
wandering into the woods, lest they be killed and eaten by wild animals. The one
remaining ram had pulled free from its tether and escaped and had disappeared into
the thicket and Freki, being afraid of the dark woods, did not dare go after it. Purs
The Giant, Orka The Mighty and Uxi The Ox had spent the entire day building an
enclosure of sturdy saplings. Once that was ready and, with the flock secure for the
night, only two at a time were needed to stand watch.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562826

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763106

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume III

13th of November
The wind re-assumes its first posture,
trees recreate their old shape, it’s not
the wood of the bed anymore, nor the hanger,
the closet, the wooden bowl on the small, round
table of the villager, the wooden spoon that serves
the food, it’s the tree with its branches and its shade
in the clouds and in the air that undresses the place
off its colors
and dresses the houses, the people and their deeds
with a nakedness lacking forgetfulness and memory.
Things are a lot simpler than we thought, so that
we suddenly felt surprised; and we stood, stared
and smiled exactly when we pressed our nails
in our palms.
All these came about slowly, bit by bit, without us
paying attention to them. Perhaps things will reassume
their original shapes tomorrow. Nothing is for sure.
But perhaps out of all these new things a stronger
shaking of hands might remain, two eyes that gazed at
two other eyes without the edge of hesitation, a lighter
that lighted five cigarettes randomly and the number
five won’t be one, two, three, four, five, but only
one number f i v e —
These, of course, don’t become a poem and
here I write them on paper like a useless stone on
top of other stones, which, one day, might help
build a house.
Tonight that I believe in everything no one will
believe me.
The lamp that lights my paper doubts me.
Panagiotis too.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK

Opera Bufa

Nineteenth Canto
Opening the room’s left window I embalm
your sweaty breasts with incense
and in your embrace I fall like
the blue symbol
of my Mediterranean dream with
its immensity dictating another movement
to be sung for people’s ears
the grandeur of accomplishment
lies with futility of effort shadow
following flight of a robin
splitting the laughter of daffodils in
a triad of verses; gluttony avarice
envy melded into a charisma
of ebony night punching holes
through bed sheets of the Kore as
transient screws bore into stamina
day plummets into a morbid
well like last hours of winter
bodies imparted into earth
air moved by a fragrant song
lamenting for the unannounced Hades
who just comes and goes as He pleases
with His bad breath and His sharpened
sickle that shatters hopes and bones
and I walk slowly on the cool floor
dragging my sin and your passion
before the mirror’s eyes and the
curtain’s sway as a forest nymph
or what one might say to two clouds
competing at filtering your sunshine
blessing you with shade in the
midst of hottest July? Cicadas
parading in the olive grove
ask ‘what now?’ and as in symphony
they answer: we can do better

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763092