Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

Griffin Awards

https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/

I was almost sick from the glance that dwelled inside me
I ripped the envelops spitefully, looked from behind
the curtain or gathered the street shadows
and finally since I’ll certainly die unknown to anyone
birds flew quietly
carrying the good tidings.
The bus was taking the poor servant girls to witness
the executions, they said;
who was due to be executed? The always self-centered
sun tried to rise higher
and you certainly had to finally gain your life since
you’ve hurt so much;
the sweet old man stood outside the butcher shop
he was looking for a small bone and he barked just
to prove that anything was possible;
the woman with her yellowed, wood-like face turned
into a candles stall from which the destitute stole
the wax,
yet why you asked me how I got here
I must think of a lot of forbidden things and closing
my eyes I surrender.
Until the moon sauntered around the house fifty long
years
“I’m an incestuous person”, I say to him, “remember that
moan, should I had hid it the whole merciless buzz of
the road could be heard”
refugees were sleeping at the parking for carriages,
whispers, you couldn’t hear but you could guess
winter was coming
and the old rats were looking at you not scared at all
uncertain of which end they could choose
in fact mother was startled when she saw me under
the table…

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Swamped

excerpt

with his other hand and just stares at it. By then Nicolas has rushed
over. He stares at the twisted, swelling arm too.
“Can you lift it?” Nicolas asks.
“No, I can’t, and it hurts so much,” Eteocles replies, tears flowing
down his cheeks now.
“Let’s go get help,” Nicolas says and helps his brother home. As
soon as their mom sees Eteocles holding one arm with his other
hand, she starts yelling in fear. Then she rushes to the landlady of the
house and asks where she can take the boy. The landlady knows a
woman who can fix things like this, and they all walk to the practitioner’s
house, which is a long way off. When they finally arrive in
the courtyard of the woman’s house, a strange figure dressed all in
black appears and takes them inside to her kitchen. She removes
Eteocles’s shirt and examines his arm, then quickly mixes some soap
and warm water in a bucket and begins to massage and rub and pull
the injured arm from the shoulder down to the hand again and again
and again while Eteocles’s tears flow like a river and his yells deafen
the neighborhood. A kitchen floor has become a makeshift hospital
but without any anesthesiologists, consoling nurses, or doctors specializing
in bone structures. Yet as harsh and as painful as the treatment
is, in the end the woman declares that she has put the bones
back in their proper places, and after she wipes the arm clean of all
the water and soap and adds a band of plaster and a sling made of a
kitchen cloth, she assures them that Eteocles will now be okay.
It is a long, slow, painful walk home, like the soldier’s walk in a
funeral procession. Eteocles cries all the way back to their house as
Nicolas stands next to his little brother, trying to console him, assuring
him it will all be okay in a few days. When the finally reach home,
they find their father anxiously waiting. He sees his son with his arm
in a sling and only says, “Bravo, boy, you have done well.” No one
knows how to interpret this, and Eteocles remembers those strange
words for a long time.
When his arm develops ankylosis from being kept too long in
the sling, they take him to a different practitioner who has to redo
the treatment almost from scratch, but finally, after almost four
months, Eteocles regains the full use of his arm…

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Jazz with Ella

excerpt

“Maybe he’s right not to be involved too much,” Jennifer went on. “I can’t drag everybody into this. You could be caught, maybe jailed. I don’t even know what the penalty might be.”
“I’m not being silly,” Maria returned. “I know it’s not an elopement. But it’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard of. And it’s good, Jen. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. I want to be involved. I know it’s risky.”
“Please, let’s not keep talking about it. Not here.” Jennifer pointed at the metal grill halfway up the column. She felt sick and couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the stuffy room at the Bucharest alone.
“Let’s go then,” said Maria, exasperated. “Come on. I’ll take you to the restaurant and we’ll have some of that strong Georgian wine.”
★
Sergey Ivanovich, the machinist from Novizavod, was delighted. Luck was with him, and he was alert enough to take advantage of it. Good fortune had placed him on that Aeroflot plane in the first place, somehow as part of a group of foreign tourists. Not only that, but luck had seated him next to a green-eyed, laughing woman whom he had fallen in love with immediately. She had offered to shop for him at the Beryozka in Moscow. He could enter it, of course, but Soviets didn’t shop there. It would only call attention to him if he began to flash around foreign currency. This plan of hers not only suited him well but gave him an opportunity to see her again. Lona, she said, was her Russian name. Her last name was Jewish, he felt sure. Lona was a magnificent name, an excellent one. Throwing caution to the winds, Sergey had eschewed the primitive airport bus in favour of a taxi and rode in from the airport using some of his neighbour’s shopping funds—an unnecessary extravagance but he had loved every minute of it. Besides, it would get him to the Hotel Rossiya before Lona, so that he could meet her at the Beryozka that very evening before she changed her mind.
But after rushing into the city, he had been forced to wait for the Canadian’s tour bus anyway. He couldn’t stand in the lobby of the hotel too long; it would arouse comment and he didn’t want to press his luck, so he had waited first in the telegraph office then on a street corner, somewhat conspicuously, he thought, but the latter gave him the best vantage point. The tour busses generally turned at this corner, whichever of the four entrances they used. He waited and watched every one.

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Übermensch

Epode
We the leaders and the followers
the blind killers and the blind victims
I the atheist and the pious
the filthy rich and the despondent
We the egotistical and the humble
the allies and the enemies
I the knowledge and the ignorance
the palatial and the squalor
We the dreamers and the dreamless
the forever roamers and the domesticated
I the important consonant and the vowel
the wide ocean and the secluded cove
We the princes and the beggars
the bigots and the altruists
I the hero and the traitor
the serpent and the eagle
We the sheep and the lions
the socialites and the hermits
I the free spirited and the fanatic
the man erectus and the worm
We the anthropocentric and the anthropoid
the autocratic and the marionettes
I the child of God and Devil’s cousin
the arduous worker and the tedious
We the initiates and the initiated
the ropewalkers and the Übermenschen

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