Kornaros's Classic Poem in Longhand by (an 12-year old resident of Crete) Manolis Emmanuel Aligizakis
Greek Canadian Literature Libros Libertad Manolis Aligizakis
Vultures
Such indifference of stars
dry eyed when the knife
opens your flesh and like
a greenhorn soldier
you stand your ground wait for the
the shoe to drop through
the echo of a deeper wound
piercing its path
through your persistence as
vultures hover
grasping jagged cliffs
gazing on the depth of thirst
below cloudless horizon suffering
under pressure of the gleaming day
excerpt
No one knew how long the Burn had offered safe haven to boats harassed by the North Channel storms. But the longships of the rampant Danes were here a thousand years ago. Nowadays the herring trawlers and the stone coasters of the home ports crowded into it and quarrelled over room like gulls on a cliff. Their ropes criss-crossed on the granite bollards; their fishing nets and floats draped the harbour walls; and granite square-setts, stacked upon the wharfs, awaited shipment to the city streets of Britain.
Today the harbour was quiet; only three yawls and a few rowing boats were moored there. The water was as still as treacle. Across the river from the entrance to the harbour, diagonally opposite to where Caitlin stood, the ruins of Killyshannagh Chapel, also known as the Sailors’ Church, rejoiced in having been released from the choke of ivy and brambles and thorn trees that had hidden it from sight for a large part of the three hundred years it had stood there. Shipwrecked sailors, vagrants and unbaptized babies were buried in the overgrown field behind the crumbling stone walls. Caitlin’s grandfather, Big George Corrigan, one of the unloved travelling people, was buried there. So was her mother. Caitlin herself often wished she could be buried there, within sight of the hills and the sound of the sea, but no burials were permitted there now except by consent of the district council, but even that was most often withheld. Finn MacLir had a permit allowing him to be buried there in the same grave as his first wife, the tragic Roisin Corrigan, but his burial could well be the last at Killyshannagh. Beyond the harbour and the ancient church and the stone-walled fields behind it, the chevroned line of mountains gleamed as if they had been painted in enamel on the blank backdrop of the sky.
Caitlin stepped on to the wharf and crossed to the edge of the harbour, where Nora was standing, looking down. Only then did Caitlin see the figures. The scene had looked empty and lifeless, with only the glint of reflected sun to highlight it like a watercolour. But figures were clustered on one of the fishing boats, some standing, exchanging words and glancing down into the centre of the group where others crouched over or hunkered round something on the deck. Caitlin felt uneasy. She clasped her sister’s hand, and Nora glanced at her.
A few yards to their left, old Tom Stump—his real name was Stevenson—sat on a bollard with his short leg stretched in front of him, his clasped hands resting on the pads of his crutches. He was watching what was going on below him in the boat and did not notice Caitlin till she spoke.
excerpt
Momacted up in public she crossed one of these invisible demarcations.
We’d find her suicide notes magnetized to the fridge door
like shopping lists. Rough drafts, she called them. At the end of one
such letter, as though the deed had been accomplished, shewrote, I
was bored.
Asked what was stopping her from carrying out the threat, she
replied, Have you seen the price of natural gas lately?
The procedure was always the same: as soon as she began behaving
strangely, the cops were notified; an ambulance followed. A caring
social worker wrote a lengthy report.
We knew when it was time. Mom hid behind the curtains and
spied on passersby. School kids jeered. Eventually she would do
something deemed a danger to herself or others — the line. Cops
were alerted; an ambulance followed. A caring social worker wrote
a lengthy report.
Doctors began with pills. None worked. Electric shock therapy—
Edison medicine — did. A psychiatrist at the bughouse called us in
for a chat after the first session. He directed us to the patients’
lounge. We found Mom playing Scrabble.
– I haven’t felt this good in years! she beamed. She was unrecognizably
radiant. We gathered her things.
My father wanted to believe his wife had been cured; we all did.
The doctor did nothing to dissuade us. But the electrical charge had
the lasting power of a flashlight battery. My mother’s sanity waned
like the trailing notes of an orchestra. Follow-up drugs gave her the
shakes. She soon stopped taking them.
– I’m fine now, she declared. A-okay.
But she wasn’t A-okay. There was a look . . . that look. She slipped
away from us incrementally. In time, she was gone for good.
Exhausted from their shopping spree, Mr. and Mrs. Cameron turn in
early. Lenore stays up with us, bravely trading a tent shaking with
snores for the certain terror of being left alone with her brother.
Larry pelts his sister with marshmallows.
– Stop it! she cries.
– Make me, he challenges.
– I’m telling!
– You’ll die.
excerpt
Challenge Met
“Rule your mind or it will rule you.”
(Horace, Roman Poet)
~~
The damp, dull days of winter on Vancouver Island passed. With each
calendar page turned, Ken was feeling stronger and more anchored in
reality. He’d spent some six months thinking and rethinking each automatic
reaction until he felt he had regained a measure of control. Much of this
private time was spent exploring the creeks and rivers from their estuaries to
their canyons and cold springs above and between the old Island Highway
following the shoreline and the newer Inland Island Highway. He revelled in
the changeable beauty of the seashore; so different in this Pacific Northwest
than the Mediterranean climate he’d grown up with.
Winter storms drove pounding waves, which surged northward up the
Strait of Georgia. They virtually reshaped the beaches, shifting not only
sand and gravel, but also moving the weighty cobble. The grind of the
rolling stone was loud over the crash of the waves.
The power of nature is marvellous. I began to wonder what the rate of
travel of the cobble actually was. So, I went out and collected a bunch
of beach boulders of comparable size and weighing roughly within half
a pound of each other. All were the same type of stone, therefore the
same specific gravity. I got a few cans of spray paint and painted one
side of all these rocks bright red and the opposite side daffodil yellow,
and took buckets of them over to the mouth of the Nile, approximately
one kilometre south of my cottage.
I dumped them all in one spot and waited to see how long it would
take them to migrate down the shore to my cottage. They were clearly
visible from a distance.
The first painted stones appeared in front of the cottage within
three and a half days—the last in five days. I’d never have thought it
possible.
Preacher
Down the mountainside
I saw him descending
like a warring blaze, a phantasm
carrying behind him dissension
hatred and fanaticism
I saw him riding the rules
and dogmatic iron bars tightly
placed on slavery and servitude
his spite and immense ego
brandishing the foreigners’ holy
medicine echoing valley of fear
flowers hiding their blossoms
time was for sorrowful chime
of bells untethered and pious
freaky creaks gathered to pay
the paid-up leaders leading
believers to salvation a mass
of flesh ready for Purgatory
simple-minded and stupid souls
hoping for their forever salvation
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 