All torn from the pages of childhood (Birthdays) – October 1961, Los Angeles
There is no speech
when a black-winged bird
curves the roads of a cold autumn sky
when the wind-hunted moon
hangs gray hair on your shoulders
and the leaves from the desolate sidewalks
creep into your shoes seeking warmth.
Venice, California, 1961
Tonight I met brother Leroy
who professes to be Christ
the ecstatic savior the poets talked about.
He had all the palm trees in his hair
all the goat-bells round his earlobe
and sunk into meditation
at his usual spot; his stale coffee had burnt a hole in the table,
revealing thus powers of infinite years of persistence.
It was his dread this hole
it had begun to curve
(a concave, ethereal shape)
ready to be presented at the World’s Fair showing
perplexing the caste of stable engineers.
Ararat – 1962, Los Angeles
Rain.
The sky sings in two big slices.
Flame;
white-headed, clean shaven.
Don’t fear to touch
Be thunderstruck.
Truth is found with the turning of a stone.
Beneath it the earth is raw and damp,
piercing the roots and lashes of green
spiders and worms rise to meet you.
After hours Jam Session
Sing in the nights of spearless fog
in the blue sweat of a gleaming horn
O reincarnation of endless woes.
America
here I stretch my arms
hopeless elongation of my voice
to paint my soul
in your big lap
which seeks and refuses it
growing monstrosity and salvation
edges of comforting absurds
joy, madness, fear and trumpets.
Letter
It’s only a few weeks
that I have left our bleak room,
companion of my student days,
bed full of unwashed clothes
bottles and socks mingling with verses
and the full tray of endless tobacco dreams.
Now I speak to you from the island of Skyros,
where charcoal shadows slide over the feverish soil,
barren like pepper, spiced with small grains of silver.
Picture from Athens (for P.K.)
It was dawning.
Carts rattled with fruit through the early streets.
We had a steaming coffee and a quiet cigarette on
the sidewalk of the tall wooden chairs…
O white city.
Monemvasia
Stars stitched on Venetian walls
goat skeletons whitening the rocks
and an incessant mourning
that rises from the ruins of
Byzantine churches
all reaches far over the scissory sea
the cry of a dying city.
September 1962
Song
O let me tell you how I spent my day / perhaps you will
understand
At start of day I dressed the nude stage,
placing black curtains, scattering ashes, (tonight our play
speaks of exile and waste)
then lay on a marble bench in the ancient Agora
reading a Henry Miller novel,
listened to a carpenter and a coin-dealer discussing
White Cistern Summer
At the top of the hill
children are playing in the water.
White cistern, sun-born,
voices of early lust,
that’s what I first see
stepping out into the new day,
heading towards my job at the theater,
rehearsals of Medea:
Rain over Hydra
Rain has loosened the sails
of the fishing boats lying in the soft harbor.
White-bellied rock
sharp as a sword
alashing the air
falling into the rain-tempered sea,
The cat under the lantern cries;
the blue note of a cornet.
A cobblestone
the shape of a heart
lies silently in the rain
rinsed.
Trakl
Carved trails in the dead sand
wounded feet, restless
bluish veins.
Riders at luminous colors
tender coolness
embraced by green darkness.
The seashell shines in the gravel
the angel scatters ashes
silver drops cover the lips.
In the purple path of dark traps – dawning sleep.
At hollow ways sit the dead companions
in long white gowns.
Athens, 1963
Kafeneion Byzantion
Come with me
all you sleepless
to the midnight sidewalk of visions
all you restless in search of your soul.
Come with me
see bright bitter-oranges sing in the rain
and the lost cat of autumn that wails a blue note.
Come light your dark mouth
on the forehead of stars.
With Dissolution Humanness Begins to Slow
(Vision of Galaxeidi)
“Try to keep them, poet,
those erotic visions of yours,
however few of them there are that can be stilled.
Put them, half-hidden, in your lines.
Try to hold them, poet,
when they come alive in your mind
at night or in the brightness of noon.”
C. P. Cavafy
Aegean Kore
All I remember is the divine left hip curve
and a stream of dark hair
your legs strong apart slicing the sky
your breast filling the fishermen’s bay,
the sea of your eyes descends
slowly like milk lights up the rocks
o your ivory arm in full bloom
awaiting Apollo to be reborn
the sun-blackened Kouros to love you.
Syros, Summer 1964
Music
You play better
than we ever hope to sing
as “classified bards”
bouzouki-player of the taverna
you hunchback
face drowning in melody
eyes and cheeks sucked in by the skin
feverish, soul-extension fingers
oblivious of the instrument
the body becomes music.
Athens, 1964
Street Song
Tree
isolated, semi-autumnal
in your back stretches the seawhite rock
the winged statue city.
At your feet
aged and lonely
sit the dark shoe-shine men
tough, beastly complexions at dusk
with memories of sun-girls
(half a century ago)
of thighs like scissors round their beards.
Athens, 1964
After the hunt (for Spyros)
In vain he stalks the wild dove
the murderous beast of this century
who doesn’t rest
until he kills his white conscience.
Only after the hunt
sun and sweat mingling on the whipped skin
with broken rocks cutting his torso
he momentarily
becomes a tired Christ figure
gun and soul sprawled on
the lily sand
so smooth and deep
sighing across the painful blue of
he endless sea.
Delagratsia, Syros, Summer 1964
Delagratsia, Syros, Summer 1964
The land is lonely
The earth is infinitely barren
animals graze on its heart
their mouth full of pebbles
white, lean – nothing else.
Syros, Summer 1964
Summer
Here are the priests of the seaweed
and the seashells
the religion of the statues and the vine
here is the holiness of the universe
a gift to the truly pious
the pagans who chant and adore
praising Zeus, Buddha, Christ
and the blue-eyed fish.
Here bronze legs against the rocks
volcanic breast against volcanic earth
and torching eyes that murder speech.
Here the liturgy of the north wind
(deep psalms)
turning stone into flesh
the statues have become live again
Apollonian torsos and phallic idols
rise to greet us.
Listen:
The prayer of waves surrounds the Cyclades
black sea birds stretch sun-ropes across the sky.
Delos, 1964
Harbor Song
Two triangles of island marble
in million variations of grey and white
start from the roots of the sky
with hips broadening as the descend
to the seaweed gardens of the Aegean.
(Still topping them are two phallic church towers
impregnating, inflaming the clouds.)
All is embraced by the soul songs
rising from way down in the bay
harbor songs mingling joy and blues.
The celebration of sensual delights
with the dark lament of lost hopes.
Hermoupolis, 1964
Nightsong
Island boat
like island moon
just few lines make up this world.
Woman-shaped islands
two of them
the whitest boat is watching them
the whitest moon caresses them
no sound
just heartbeats and
spellbound eyes.
Syros, 1964
Exhibition
(for F.B.)
In art’s passionate works
you notice
how surface conceptions dissolve
and prejudice vanishes stage after stage.
See this painting.
In layer upon layer
the human being is unmasked
successively emerging
ambiguous
anxious
and finally,
a true child of the age,
listlessly anonymous.
The Lottery Boy
(Omonia Square)
The lottery boy
against the neon-signs
in the charred noon hours.
His small shaven head is the sun
his bullet eyes are the blackened suns
his lean neck is the burning sun-rop
(o this profusion of light
abyssal and wasteful as death).
Immobile boy
like a fragile Ionian column
framed by the naked wires of lettering
misspelled Anglo-Saxon
small boy selling lottery tickets
who has no siesta
since already caught in the struggle of life.
1965
Herbsttag (R.M. Rilke)
Autumn again.
Chestnuts sneeze
and the wind
carries sperm to the poet’s house.
It is encouraging to see
the infinite chance of time.
(the uncompromised gift to human life)
which casts a brushstroke over today
while Monday extends into infinity.
Everyday a new start, an end,
Time always offers a clear soul
An umbrella of flowers amidst steel
I see it again in the changing of seasons.
1965
Marriage Song
As we dreamt of dark wood
white fluffy rugs
a piano holding an antique marble head
of roughly hewn country furniture
also a quiet library
the shelves full of the music of books
a huge bed to play plays
to chase each other…
these were some of the words we spoke
hungrily eagerly
designing ideal surroundings for future happiness
while a lantern moon ascended
behind the violet mountains
on a hot summer night
whispering prophesies of strained, wounded hearts
and eventual dissolution.
Athens, Summer 1969
Voyage
There is no orange shaft
springing from the eye of the Greek moon
– Prokroustis, Megara, myth –
womb of human imagery and expression
syllables, ideas and long forgotten sounds
rise here.
Waves slice the rock
near the canal
– Corinth, Periander
«Ου παντός πλειν ες Κόρινθον»
and Acrocorinth, proud mellow head,
unfolds from the vanishing eyebrows of night.
Infirmary Visions
“Und immer ins Ungebundene
gehet eine Sehnsucht”
F. Hölderlin
Hope turns into a thief,
a liar, a terrified exile.
The heat is beige
a hospital dampness
fed by the surgery’s quicksilver air.
Frantic staccato
of morse code sounds
impulsive insistent cicadas
those drummer typists of summer
and melting tar fumes of asphalt waves
besiege my senses and mind.
Near Dawn
How many voices
in the soil
in the graves
how many shadows
on the church wall
and the bar
emptied of escudos and
“muito obrigado”
Salazar,
slowly a song takes shape.
The Ballad of the Rue de Seine
We all meet sometimes eventually
in a narrow street
after walking for endless years
steaming boulevards of masked cities.
We always return to our starting place
like a river curving round itself
seeking to begin again
after the dissolution of life.
Lethe
A small fragment
a half finished poem
two momentary photo pictures
looking ill-at-ease
hands that bend sterile in space
that separates us
for the time span of a sigh
or eternity.
Voices in the roots of the soil
melting
Hotel des Anges
The songs are dying
and we
that thought ourselves angels
remote intangible
with our love eternally breathing
on the timeless shores of an Aegean island
with our rebellion firmly planted, without concessions,
in fields of marble statues
were even more vulnerable.
Emigration
Breathe deep
and listen
to the hollow sound of your soul
tonight every night
in the infinite ocean of stone
and your mind
and your heart
have stopped.
No gulls and waves
or secret mating of fishes
but young men emerging from walls
straight into the steam of the streets.