George Seferis – Collected Poems

V Man
Since then I have seen many new landscapes; green plains mixing soil with sky man and seed in an unbearable mist, plane trees and fir trees, lakes with wrinkled phantasms and immortal swans that lost their voices—scenery unfolded by my willing comrade, that wandering actor, as he played the long horn that ruined his lips and tumbled down with his shrill voice, whatever I managed to build like the Jericho trumpet. I also saw an old icon in a low ceiling hall, lots of people admired it. It depicted the raising of Lazarus. I neither recall Christ in it nor Lazarus. Only, in one corner, the disgust of someone’s face looking at it as though smelling it. He tried to camouflage his breathing with a huge cloth hanging from his head. This man of ‘Renaissance’ taught me not to expect too much from the Second Coming…
They told us you’ll conquer when you submit.
We submitted and found ashes.
They told us you’ll conquer when you love.
We loved and found ashes.
They told us you’ll conquer when you abandon your lives.
We abandoned our life and found ashes.
We found ashes. It remains to rediscover our lives now, that we have nothing left. I imagine that the one who will rediscover his life beyond the piles of papers, the many emotions, the so many debates and so much teaching, he’ll be one like us, only a bit better with memory. We, it can’t be, we still remember what we gave up. He will remember only what he gained from each of his offerings. What can a flame remember? If it remembers a bit less of what it needs, it goes out. If it remembers a bit more than is necessary, it still goes out. If it could only teach us, as it burns, to remember properly. I am finished. Wish that someone else starts from where I am finished. There are times that I feel I have reached the end, that everything is in its place ready to sing in harmony. The machine at the point of starting. I even imagine it in motion alive like something unsuspectedly new. But there is still something, an infinitesimal obstacle, a grain of sand…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

Nikos Engonopoulos – Poems

…the faucet drips, the pitcher fills
the miller turns the mill
the moon reigns, Venus will rise
we depart for a foreign land
we placed the most awake man
at the helm
on the smokestack
we put a bayadere
and our chairs are rococo:
hey, we’ll pass the Atlantic!
Storms and rain will hit us
and, like them or not,
what rough seas and what bad luck!
Waves will charge to sink us
thunderbolts will whip the sky
saltwater will drench us
as if we were under a faucet!
Yet, let it be known we’ll make it
no one
will drown
as the foreign land
expects us
calm seas and sunshine blue sky, not a single cloud
the waters are calm dark green
like a painting of Altamira
we shall enjoy the serenity
while we lean over the deck
and we shall see the whalers follow
their precious hunt
and no concern, no shiver…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3744799#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763734

Marginal

Timber
Moving from the forest, on foot,
travelling to become the beams
holding the weight of guilty souls
lighter than air, timber that was sliced
polished as polished emeralds adorning
ears and hardened nipples of women
having their share of loneliness inside
rooms with fluttering curtains keeping
secrets of life loitering out in the street
venomous cries of hurt and pierced
flesh, obelisks erected reminding
of men who walk tall or crawl
on all fours, begging, absorbing,
or standing naked before them, heavy
ardent, Cyclopean with hairy arms and
rough palms caressing or abusing
the fine skin of prostitutes or pensive
girls unaccustomed to roughness
of human behaviour, girls who someday
will lie on adultery mattresses and accept
treasonous promises made by men
only desiring their secret caves
honeycomb of their pubic hair, a honey
dripping beehive of a body as the expanse
of their erotic desire girls sobbing in
moonlit nights while he stands with
tuned ears listening to the commotion
tears drip and roll down his cheeks
with focused eyes observing movements
of torsos undulating waves of the lustful sea
with nostrils opening to bodily odours

https://draft2digital.com/book/3747032#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771715987

Kariotakis – Polydouri, The Tragic Love Story

I’m the Garden
I’m a garden where flowers once bloomed
filled with the joyous chirps of birds
with secret whispers and soundless kisses
at night love walked around my shadows.
I’m a garden stuck in the same place
for many years in vain waiting for a return
and instead among the flowers I’ve been buried
in the thorns my nightingales have been silenced
and I’ve been choked by the snakes

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562951

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763459