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XIII Come, sit next to me, and let us smell the sweet aroma of freshly harvested glover with a multitude of sparrows chasing the cicadas and the salty trees by the shore breathing salinity mixed with serenity and watery passion under the auspices of the soft bending of branches and let us listen to the kids playing football on the open field five sunburned village boys with bright eyes and future written in their irises and we copy all the images from the quiet light blue transcendence of the terrace that charges into our bedroom and onto the outline of your body unparalleled eternity and longing of my palm seeking your ethereal lines.
“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?”
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.
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.
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
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 