PHOEBE GIANNISI
DELIRIA
translated by Konstantinos Matsoukas
BUS
a great age a young age a lioness arrival of bus next to the driver by the engine over on the other side a seat the engine is warm I sat on it on his knee he had me I was light as a feather I knew how to balance I knew when to move same exact motions repeated with no variations with minimal enormous variations with a different rhythm different pressure intensity different placement of the body of a small part of the body everything standing but the hair fell to the front to the side next to the driver the engine warm a red towel and photographs words a lot of words warm words in the ear next to the cheek inside the belly words inside the hole flowers I have no wish for when I die only words only words
OTHER
I looked at the photograph many times I look at it often and all the other photographs too from old times your face our faces then the faces of other owners the faces of other people is it the period I said it’s that it’s the past you said it’s that then was then and there I said then there with someone else you weren’t the you I know you said I look at the photograph again the gaze is different the laughter more open the gaze more tender I think to myself the world for you was lighter then the eyes you were looking at weren’t my own I said you are kneeling the angle of this photograph is from above you are smiling with trust with joy behind is the sea you used to belong elsewhere once I do belong elsewhere I am unfamiliar a stranger men don’t like looking at old photographs you said women like it I said they’re always looking to find what will hurt they’re always looking to find what will hurt not just in what will be but also what was what was is now far away from us you said and yet it’s not it is always near I said what happened is gone but it may return the stranger may wake up again inside your near and dear the secret stranger a ghost waiting to rise take on the other gaze the other laughter turn towards someone else and you become him and me not be her
YOU ME
you giving me without me asking giving me because you want to give without even knowing you are giving giving me effortlessly when I don’t expect it but also when I do even when I expect without knowing giving knowing about me before I do wanting what I want wanting what I want before I realize I want it or wanting what I want because you are more me than I am wanting together the same or wanting what the other will give us when he gives it giving together before we have time to think or having a desire and it being a joint desire or being ready to receive being ready to receive what we will give or being ready to receive our desire to have desires in the other’s place when you tell me we’ll do this I’m sure you’ll like it and we do it and I like it more than what I had thought I wanted maybe I like it more because you thought of it and not I but you thought of it on my behalf before I did you were me before I was myself because the two together we are something else that goes further than each of our separate I’s a double me a double you
TIME
Our relationship to others is the time we give them the one in the movie said who was about to die or maybe he said the time we give is all we have I don’t remember exactly also he may have said the only thing that exists is time nothing outside time said the dead man to be and then I started thinking what little time I gave here and there and when I was giving or not giving that time might have I understood that same thing differently which is to say the importance of presence and the importance of absence it is customary to always say that distance is the important thing and not proximity distance which generates desire on the contrary desire is erased by proximity your desire and my desire that is one way but your presence and my presence another way the two ways are contradictory can then the intensity of the offer be juxtaposed if time is not merely quantity but also intensity except the definition of time is quantity what is a mortal’s time but the quantity of his existence the measurable time of the mortal’s existence is mortality and his life the time of proximity and the time of distance time separately and time together what is given us is what we have to spend our course through the world is the waste of time that without us knowing its eventual amount has been given us from somewhere to thoughtlessly spend
INMEMORIAM
come on now don’t try to avoid me you said I’m thinking of something I said it’s nothing that important really you have a nice hand I don’t remember anything from those days you said neither do I nor do you remember once upon a time years and years in the same building sometimes I wake up in my sleep and I have Had a dream I said somewhere in there it’s at the same time the same and not the same like in all dreams it corresponds to the truth then but also to this one now in my head though it is also a lie you are you said you just like anything if anything is because all the old stories no longer exist I said they do not exist even if we remember them what we remember is therefore the same or it is other I know that what I know happened it’s the details that are missing I said details don’t provide an outline no they are the outline you said being expelled from school in the year before last skirt blouse student uniforms I said you certainly wouldn’t fall in love then you said yes I would I said and had been already at one point I got expelled I said though it’s of no importance what with winter coming and summer over we have to go into the classrooms we have to get the notebooks you didn’t wear a school uniform I said you did you said time is passing amid all the noise Antigone refuses to leave the brother outside the walls she is raised against successive humiliations I said forgotten half-forgotten successive and then iambs triumphs equally forgotten in the schoolyard chats with classmates secrets more alive than facts bells ringing outgrowing of clothes let’s go to the sea you said whatever I leave behind cannot be retrieved again I don’t want to collect the parts now expulsions returns fair lovers secret corners cries illusive nests voices moments vigilance and silence inside and out always the seasons balconies anticipations maps on the walls blackboards let’s go I said come on you said let’s go I said I’m leaving you said in here I said outside you said always I said at that point in time you said now now
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from HOMERICA, Athens, Kedros editions, 2009
translated by Konstantinos Matsoukas
(Preamble)
a stone at the bottom white
rows of pale blue pebbles the face
upon them in the water
the boat’s skip on the waves
we are flying
a single gull on the rocks
a congress of gulls squawking incessantly
at intervals
they go silent
like the cicadas
their incessant buzzing stops abruptly at the point
of the noon-heat’s greatest clarity
in the car the buzzing of cicadas more frequent
more continuous
more rapid
you have forgotten everything
cannot recall
the how
you are beginning to forget the what
If only the how were a repetition of the what
the forgetting of moments to you a medicine
against
the sadness of the irrevocable
with head covered in an uncharted place
you listen to the singer of yourself
words by Nobody
enumerate
the wanderings of a an astute man
the air sea mistakes unreciprocated gifts
you well know that the series of what is self
but have you learned that the series of how
is the wind?
Agios Lavrentios, 08-10-07
(Homecoming I)
for mom
can one live with the memory?
one can
can one live with the memory without
hoping in repetition?
I don’t know
(I don’t know how they live when grieving for the ones they so lo-
ved
despite it all they do as a rule bear up withstand
hold up whereas they thought it can’t be done
won’t be able to go on living
without the other without the One but life
figures otherwise time never says the same tale
the body plots it resists the soul
in order to forget
it remembers to go on living)
(Homecoming III)
lightness lightness lightness
all of life a nostalgia for lightness
lightness of the air in spring
under the trees one noon
words are hovering the sun shadows light
lightness of summer mornings
lightness in battle
when the limbs of Achilles the limbs
of the heroes rise of their own accord
as if god put wings there
where forcefulness is not needed
there
where there is an excess of forcefulness
forcefulness does not spring out of the will
forcefulness grows effortlessly inside
the body
when the breath of the self is the breath
of the weather surrounding the body
the hand drags in the water
the boat is bringing it
is itself brought along by another force
whether of the engine or the wind
lightness the buzzing of the fly
of the insect tirelessly
scampering ascending descending walking
weightless like a caress
lightness of the air in spring
neither cool not warm
the body spreads and receives it
nothing annoys
only joy at its touch at its
unreserved embrace
an embrace with no intention no goal
nostalgia lightness nostalgia
of Paradise
we say Paradise is
then when
all seasons were spring
the air had that temperature
there was no gravity
you ‘ve no need to fly
so long as you think
you are outside
as if you are inside
that the body moves of its own
there is no effort
it is relaxed
stretched long
it is upright in repose
the eyes look and see
they take pleasure in what they see
they listen to what they see
they sniff the air
the air enfolds
it smells of grass sea
cicadas are heard
sometimes the air may be a little warm
and because it is warm it may be
a little dense that is a little light
the soul stretches
it remembers not
it is inside itself inside its body
I start to walk and I am flying
I am a bird without flying
uphill is downhill
the car is speeding
from the windows enters the outside
I turn my gaze and see
two sparrows
I turn my gaze again
the sparrows have flown away
I do not know how all this exists
the birds in the sky
I know it without seeing them
when I see them
they are no longer there
I was there too
I want to be there again
a breath for a small gift
a small now that does not last
it will stay it will go it will be forgotten
Volos, January 2006
(Achilles)
Odyssey, 9, 366-367
the boat DREAM is up for sale
the tugboat ACHILLES stares at STARLET
straight in the face
PRINCE ABDUL CHAZIZ
from Jordan
has never been seen sailing off
lights all ablaze in the night
tied up all year long the palace
the king is not here
sixty five men
ghosts of the port
maintain day and night they wash down
incessantly look after the ship
and across the way you
I see you I saw you today too
you patch nets inside the big fishing boats
ten in each
today Sunday a day of leisure before the full moon
you are given like I am to household chores
bent over your eggplant-colored handiworks
listening to music on transistor radios
each man one glass of tea one radio
with needles you are patching bent over
with eyes red and bleary
dark men in woolen sweaters
nobody wears them here
under the overcast sky wordless
and under the rain
the men from Africa
said they only know the water
they were born in the water
fresh not salty I say riding my bike
water of the Nile egyptian
and on top I say
your hands hardened frozen
by the cold of my to you northern country
are fishing in our waters
patiently patching each year
waiting for the time
to return to Africa
when there is a break from fishing when the trawlers
are pulled out to shore
migratory birds swallows
back to their own waters
to their own wives
to the dirt houses by the river
although now I can ask
which is the place of the journeyer
the Here or the There
the origin or the arrival
how can he impersonate the Name
who before used to be no one
Volos, 21-10-07
(Thetis)
Thetis
the one who positions herself
perhaps
always the one who posits
as we know even she
who refused to be posited
to surrender to the man
becoming
fire wind water
tree fowl tiger
becoming
lion snake cuttlefish
until one time at the Sepia peninsula the mortal
steadfastly positioned her gripping
the prey in a stronghold
and ate her during the lovemaking
only left her white bone
the bone of the cuttlefish on the shore
washed clean by the wave
Thetis is no longer there
she blows a conch from the depths
of the sea
a funnel a large seashell echoes
with the words that say
“despite all the inks I ejected
the man devoured me
I a goddess he a mortal”
the warrior always returns dead
Volos, 23-10-07
(Penelope I – am addicted to you)
she has a passion for the swimming pool
every day in the swimming pool up and down
the same course over and over
the pool is keeping her alive
swimming in the pool maintains her
the continuous back and fro
the rhythmical breathing
the coordination of arms and legs
with the head
in out in out
the water
the head
repeatedly goes under and comes up
blows out inside sucks in the air outside
the pauses every so often in the lane
the tiles underneath the surface in
the light
the strange bodies threatening
in caps and flippers
the water full of chlorine
the sky above cypress trees
the pool is keeping me alive
the continuous song
the counting
one two three four five
six seven eight nine fifteen
nineteen strokes turns
the song of the counting the repetition fossilizes
the song of the pool rescues me
it rescues me from the knowledge that
he doesn’t love me
Volos, 24-5-07 |
