Category: Reading Greece

THE KITE by Odysseas Elytis

However, I was made to be a kite.
Heights thrilled me even when
I stayed face down on my pillow
punished for hours and hours.
I felt my room ascend
I was not dreaming- it ascended
I was afraid and I liked it.
It was that which I saw how can I say it
something like “memory of the future”
all trees which were leaving, mountains which were changing their view
little geometric villages with curly forests
like adolescents- I was afraid and I liked it
to just touch the bell tower
to caress the church bells like orchids and lose myself…

People with parasols passed diagonally
and smiled at me;
sometimes they knocked on the window: “miss”
I was afraid and I liked it.
They were the “people on top” that’s what I called them
they were not like the “bottom” ones;
there were generations of them and many held in their hands a gardenia
some half-opened the door of the balcony
and put strange music on the record-player.
It was- I remember- “Annette with the sandals”
“The geyser of Spitsbergen”
the “Fruit we did not bite, May will not come to us”
(yes, I remember others, too)
I say it again- I was not dreaming
suddenly that “Open halfway your clothing and I have a bird for you.”
He had brought it to me, the Knight-bicyclist
one day when I sat and pretended to read-
his bicycle with extreme care
he had leaned on the side of my bed;
afterwards he pulled the string and I blew up into the air
they shone, my colorful undergarments
I looked at how transparent they become, those who love
tropical fruits and kerchiefs of faraway Epirus;
I was afraid and I liked it
my bedroom ascended
or I- I have never understood it.
I am made of porcelain and magnolias
my hand comes from the most ancient Incas
I slide between doors like
the most infinitesimal earthquake
which only dogs and newborn babies feel;
properly speaking I must be a monster
and yet opposition
always nourished me and that depends on
those with the pointy hats
who have hidden conversations with my mother
at night to judge.
Once
the voice of the bugle from the faraway barracks
wrapped itself around me like barbed wire and everyone around me
applauded- splinters of incredible years’
meteors, all.
At the spa next door, the faucets opened-
facedown on my pillow
I saw the springs with their immaculate whiteness which sprinkled me;
how beautiful, my God, how beautiful
down on the ground, stepped on by feet
that I hold still in my eyes
such a mourning from the distant past.

[From the poetry collection “Maria Nefeli” (Ikaros), translated by Eva Johanos]

🖼 Dimitris Mytaras

📖 POEM OF THE WEEK: "The Carnival" by Miltos Sachtouris

Miltos Sachtouris (1919-2015) was one of the most important representatives of the Surrealist movement in post-World War II Greek #poetry.

Included in his poetry collection With Face to the Wall, “The Carnival” is another poem with war as its central theme. The festive atmosphere of a #carnival is transformed into a grotesque nightmare of a war scene. One can discern elements of the festivity, a wandering little hobby-horse, children holding their kites, the falling confetti, the carnival moon. However, the portrait is very bleak, the ‘hobby-horse wander[s]’ in the deserted streets where ‘not a soul breathe[s]’, the children climbing up the sky are dead, the confetti is glass ‘bleeding the heart’ and the moon is ‘stabbed’ and thrown into the sea.

The key to what is happening is to be found in the lines: “only columns of soldiers passed right-left/ right-left with frozen teeth”, which reveals that in the guise of a carnival, the poet is actually presenting a horrifying image of war. He juxtaposes the images of children in a joyous festivity to the images of violence and death in order to show the insanity of war.

Read more 👉https://www.greeknewsagenda.gr/poem-of-the-month-the-carnival-by-miltos-sachtouris/