Gestures and Other Poems 1968-1970

Citation preview

GESTURES

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GESTURES and other poems 1968-1970 feeble

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YANNIS RITSO Translated from the Greek by Nikos Stangos

with illustrations by the poet

Cape Goliard Press London 1971 in association with Grossman Publishers New York

This collection copyright © 1971 by Yannis Ritsos English translation copyright © 1971 Nikos Stangos This first edition was designed, printed and published by Cape Goliard Press, 10a Fairhazel Gdns, London NW6. Printed in Great Britain.

Some of these poems were first published in these translations in the Times Literary Supplement, Modern Poetry in Translation and The London Magazine.

UK ISBN: paper 0206—00643—8; cloth 0206—00642—x US SBN: paper 670—33757—9; cloth 670—33756—0 LCCC No. 74—172121

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STONES, 1968

DISSOLUTION 11 UNDONE 12 ANNOUNCEMENT 13 NO, NO 14 PRELIMINARY WORK COMPULSORY 16

from REPETITIONS,

15

1968-1969

ABSENT 21 THE GRAVES OF OUR ANCESTORS 22 AFTER THE DEFEAT 23 AND RELATING THEM... 24 AFTER THE BREAKDOWN OF THE TREATY BETWEEN THE ATHENIANS AND THE LACEDAEMONIANS 25 THE NEW DANCE 26 THE DECLINE OF ARGO 27 OUR LIFE IN PHARES 28 PENELOPE’S DESPAIR 29 A PLOUGH, BY ITSELF 30

from GESTURES,

1969-1970

MIDNIGHT 35 IN THE DARK 36 UNCERTAIN DECISIONS MOTIONLESS SWAYING SO? 39 SLACKNESS 40 AFTER THE RAIN 41 OBSERVING 42

AT LEAST THE wiNp INDISPOSITION 44 CROSSROADS 45 BEFORE SLEEP 46 FOR REPAIR 47

37 38

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43/OUNGSTOWN STATE|INIVERSITY ———_ LIBsae? IRERAG

OMENS 48 THE LAST GRAPES 49 INSTRUCTIONS 50 PREPARATION 51 ENUMERATION 52 SOLDIERS AND DOLLS 53 FROM HABIT 54 DISSOLUTION 55 THE THIRD ONE 56 AFTER THE RAIN 57 IN AND OUT THE WINDOW 58 REVERSAL 59 AWAITING HIS EXECUTION 60 INSATIABILITY 61 WHITE LANDSCAPE 62 THE ABSENT ONE 63 DEPARTURES, III 64 OF MEMORY 65 RAIN 66 CIRCLE 67 STILL 68 FRESH INSOMNIA 69 UNNATURAL BLOSSOMING 70 A THREE STOREY HOUSE WITH

from CORRIDOR

AND

STAIRS,

COLLAPSE 75 THE UNHIDDEN 76 SHADOWED 77 WHAT FOR? 78 LEFT BEHIND 79 SATURDAY, 1llam. 80 IN THE VOID 81 UNCONNECTED 82 UNACCEPTABLE 83 PARTIAL 84 THE ESSENTIALS 85 CONSCIOUS 86 DESERTION 87 MEMORIAL SERVICES 88

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From STONES,

1968

DISSOLUTION 4

Dissolving shapes, moving; — a feeling of unrest, deceptive wateriness — the sound of water surrounds you, changing, deep, uncontrollable; you too are uncontrollable, almost free. Later, perplexed women and some old men came with pitchers, tin-cans, pots to collect water for their home use. The water shaped. The river silent as if empty. Dusk was falling. Doors were shutting. Only one woman without a pitcher remained in the garden, made of water, transparent in the moonlight, a flower in her hair.

15.5.1968 11

UNDONE

Clouds on the mountain. Who is to blame? What? Silent, tired, he looks before him, he turns back, he walks, he bends.

The stones are down, the birds are up. A pitcher in the window. Thistles in the valley. Hands in pockets. Pretexts, pretexts. The poem delays. Empty. The word is signified by what it would conceal.

15.5.1968 12

ANNOUNCEMENT 4

Dim faces lit by the reflection from the large mirror. The doorbell rang. No one moved. The sound went out of the window into the night, back to him who had rung the bell. Then he, now calm, as if he had fulfilled his destiny, walked to the gate, he stood, he cut a flower, he stuffed it in his shirt. “It’s a good thing —”’ he said — ““t’s a good thing they didn’t open.” No one had asked for him, no one had sent him, and he had nothing to announce; only that deep ringing noise for each of them and for himself.

16.5.1968 8)

NO,

NO

Those beautiful heroic things (maybe naive — still, beautiful) — the big white stones, the hammers, the men undressing in the workshops (mostly muscular wrestlers) to model, imitating, others’ actions — one arm raised emphatically, legs apart to exaggerate balance; — no, no, this is not a joke, he says; this goes beyond sorrow; — that emaciated dog full of ticks and wounds, drinking dirty water from a bucket left next to the almost nude statues of dead heroes. ‘

17.5.1968

PRELIMINARY

WORK

They sit so beautifully under the trees, in sun-stains, on canvas armchairs, on stools, on chairs, before the barbed wire, as if arranged to be painted — they play backgammon, they read, they are silent — they don’t hear — their background is a strip of sea, pale blue, silver, and they are so beautiful they don’t need to ask questions, they don’t know. Where the trees end, a thin boy, dirty towel on his shoulder, bends down as he collects empty lemonade bottles, their glass clouded, warm.

22.5.1968

COMPULSORY

He lies on his face; his jaw in the soil; his neck between the other’s knees; he’s turning blue; veins swell at his temples. Still. A motion; — the last convulsion? Shut your eyes. No, no. It’s simply a beautiful surrender. His body relaxes. Slowly a smile comes over his face like someone looking at the sea from a window (a somewhat narrow window, it is true), or like a

~ noble bodyless head — he can control his expression; yes, yes, he smiles. The red knife is in the tray. There are two pots of flowers on each side. His canine teeth sparkle in the sun, gold, oblong, two small bayonets on guard to his own corpse before the narrow gate of the ancient, shrewd immortality.

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From REPETITIONS,

1968—69

(17th March — 29th October, 1968: Leros Concentration Camp; 29th May — 27th June, 1969: Karlovassi, Samos)

ABSENT

Others decided, others spoke for them. They, as if absent, like outlaws (outlaws indeed), heard their names over the loudspeakers, they listened to the accusations,

their condemnation, they saw piles of signs — how many wordy threats and prohibitions — metal signs, unread. Far, far away, in alien lands, strangers in their own country, strangers to themselves, indifferent — they who had once believed in their duties, in the duties of the citizen, they, full of knowledge (known by heart), the beautiful ones, the credulous ones. And now, no temple of Amphiarao; and on the small rocky hill covered by asphodels, no black rams for a sacrifice, and you can’t spend the night there now wrapped in the still warm hides of slaughtered animals, hoping for an illumination even in a vision, for a way out, for a herb to cure their country, the whole world (as they believed),

and then to throw big gold coins in the spring, in gratitude. Although the novices only found copper pennies in the Amphiarao spring But no wonder — people forgot their promises and gold was always precious.

19.3.1968 21

THE

GRAVES

OF

OUR

ANCESTORS

We have to guard our dead. Our enemies might disinter them, steal them; then we would be in double danger without their protection. How can we live without our homes, our furniture, our fields and mainly without the ancestral graves of our fighters, our philosophers. Remember how the Spartans stole the bones of Orestes from Tegea. Our enemies should never know where they are buried. But how can we ever know who are our enemies or when, from where, they might spring up? It’s better not to have imposing monuments,

flashy ornaments — these things attract attention, envy; our dead don’t need them. Content with little, modest, silent now,

they are indifferent to votive offerings, vain glories. It might be better to have just a simple stone, a pot of geraniums as a secret sign, or nothing even. It might be safer to keep them inside us if we can, it might be better still not even to know where they lie. The turn things are taking today — who knows — we might disinter them ourselves with our own hands, one day, and throw them away.

20.3.1968 22

AFTER

THE

DEFEAT

After the destruction of the Athenians at the Aegor Rivers, a little later, after our final defeat, free discussions, the Periclean glory, the flourishing of the arts, the gymnasiums, the symposia of our philosophers have all vanished. Now gloom, a heavy silence in the market-place, and the license of the Thirty Tyrants. Everything (even what is most our own) happens by default without chance for appeal, defence or justification, or even formal protest. Our papers and our books are burned, the honour of our country rots. Even if an old friend could be allowed to come as witness, he would refuse out of fear of getting in the same trouble — he would be right of course. So, it is better to be here — who knows, maybe we can acquire a fresh contact with nature,

looking at a fragment of the sea behind the barbed wire, the stones, the weeds, or at a cloud at sunset, deep, violet, moving. And maybe a new Kimon will arrive one day, secretly led by the same eagle, and he’ll dig and find our iron spear point, rusty, that too almost disintegrated, and he might take it to Athens in a procession of mourning or triumph with music and with wreaths.

21.3.1968 23

AND

RELATING

THEM...

The way we, words, ideas have declined, we can’t be bothered with old or recent glories, with Aristeides’ biographies — and when one of us sometimes starts reminiscing about the 300 or the 200, at once the others cut him short with scorn, or at least sceptically. But sometimes,

as now, when the weather clears up — on a Sunday, sitting under an eucalyptus, in this inexorable light, a secret longing comes over one for the old glories — no matter that we call them cheap — when the procession started at dawn, in front the trumpeter, behind the chariots heavy with branches of myrtle and wreaths,

then the black bull and young men carrying wine and milk pitchers for the libations and beautiful oil and perfume bottles — but what was most dazzling, at the end of the procession, dressed entirely in purple, the Archon of Plateae who the rest of the year was not permitted to touch iron and had to dress entirely in white, now dressed in purple, carrying a long sword, crossing the town majestically, towards the heroes’ graves, holding a pitcher from the state utensils, and after the grave stones had been washed, after the rich sacrifices, he’d raise the cup of wine and pouring it over the tombs recite: “Tam offering this cup to the bravest men who fell for the freedom of the Greeks,” —and a shiver would pass through the nearby laurel woods, a Shiver which still flutters through the leaves of these eucalyptuses

and on these patched clothes all different colours hung in the sun to dry.

22.3.1968 24

AFTER THE BREAKDOWN OF THE TREATY BETWEEN THE ATHENIANS AND THE LACEDAEMONIANS

Corinth, Argos, Sparta, Athens, Sikyon — and how many other smaller city-states — the Greeks are shattered in a thousand pieces; the great treaty has broken down; everyone is full of bitterness — new meetings, plots, conferences;

those that were friends and neighbours only yesterday will not even greet each other in the street today — old resentments have cropped up again; new alliances entirely contradictory to the previous ones are being explored and prepared. Legations arrive secretly at night, others depart. The statues of heroes in the town squares are neglected, those in the public gardens are covered with bird shit. In the market-place, people in groups argue with profundity, exultation, passion: “Who ordered them? Who appointed them?” “Anyway, we didn’t vote for them (how, besides, and when?)” “New masters again? — Better without them.” It’s April. The small pepper trees on the sidewalks are turning green — a noble green, tender, child-like (it has moved us), although dusty; — the municipal services seem to be in total chaos,

they don’t even sprinkle the streets in the afternoons any longer. But today the first swallow made its unexpected appearance under the colonnade of the Parliament building

and everyone shouted: “‘A swallow; there’s a swallow; there’s a swallow —” everyone in one voice, even the most bitter opponents: A swallow. And suddenly they became silent, they felt alone, isolated, but also free, as if united by time in a collective isolation. And then they realised that their only freedom is their loneliness, but even that (although intangible) is unprotected, vulnerable, in a thousand traps, alone.

4.4.1968

THE

NEW

DANCE

Not only excuses, but genuine motives, important consequences — passions, interests, dangers, fears — Pasifai, the Minotaur, the Labyrinth and Ariadne, her beautiful erotic thread unwinding, guiding him in the stone darkness. Then Theseus’ triumphant return. He stopped at Delos and there Theseus danced around the Keraton (the famous altar made entirely of horns) together with the youths from Athens that accompanied him, a new extraordinary dance with criss-crossing steps that repeated perhaps, in the strong noon light, the dark turns of the Labyrinth and, perhaps who knows what — the birds and the cicadas made so much noise in the small nearby pine forest — you couldn’t make it out, you were dizzy from the sun and the reflections from the sea, a fine powdered glass, and the dazzling movements of the naked bodies — an extraordinary dance. And later we forgot all about Minotaurs, Pasifaes and Labyrinths and even poor Ariadne dying abandoned all alone on Naxos. But the dance quickly spread in the country and we still dance it. Ever since, the palm wreath has been decreed the trophy at the athletic Delian gymnic games.

6.4.1968 26

THE

DECLINE

OF

ARGO

Tonight talking of how things pass, age, become cheap — beautiful women, exploits, poems — we remembered the legendary ship when it was brought to Corinth one spring night, eaten by woodworm, fading, its tholepins torn off, full of patches, holes, memories. The long procession through the woods, with torches, wreaths, flutes, contests of youths. The old Argo was a magnificent offering to Poseidon’s temple. Beautiful night; the chanting of the priests; an owl hooting from the temple’s pediment; the dancers would jump lightly on the ship imitating rough action with improper grace, the motion of non-existent oars, sweat, biood. Then an old sailor spat at their feet and walked away to the small woods to piss.

7.9:1968 27

OUR

LIFE

IN

PHARES

Our misfortunes have made us superstitious —

we Study the shadows of birds’ wings and of leaves, we we we we we

listen for inaudible sounds, we retrace our steps, enter the temple on tiptoe at nightfall, burn incense at the altar, we pour oil in the votive lamps, place our offering on the altar, whisper in God’s ear:

When, from where, with what? Then

we stop our ears, we leave. When we reach the market-place we unstop our ears —

the first word to hear will be God’s answer. The word is never what we hope for — could we have mis-heard? And so we start the same boring routine ail over again — the temple, the votive lamps, the offering, the market-place, until the time when the shops close, the lights are put out. In the street, alone, walking close to the walls, we turn the word over and over in our mind, letter by letter, we reverse its syllables and still we never get what we want. This is how we spend our life in Phares between the deserted market-place and the inauspicious oracle.

17.6.1968 28

PENELOPE’S

DESPAIR

Not that she didn’t recognise him in the dim light of the fire, his disguise in beggar’s rags. No. There were clear signs: the scar on the knee-cap, his muscular body, the cunning look. Frightened, leaning against the wall, she tried to find some excuse, a delay to avoid answering so as not to betray her thoughts. Was it for him she had wasted twenty years waiting and dreaming? Was it for this wretched stranger soaked in blood, with his white beard? She fell speechless on a chair, she looked closely at the slaughtered suitors on the floor as if looking at her own dead desires and she said “welcome” her voice sounding to her as if it came from a distance, as if someone else’s. The loom in the corner cast shadows across the ceiling like a cage, the birds she had woven with bright red threads among green leaves suddenly turned gray and black flying low on the flat sky of her. final endurance.

21.9.1968 29

A

PLOUGH,

BY

ITSELF

Everything was decreed, safe, logical, even human. The municipal temples played their part; Athena protected justice; always present, although invisible, she presided over the meetings of the Areios Pagos. When the jury was split, the balance of justice would always favour the accused.

Those were good days — they almost don’t sound true now. Did they ever exist? Were they a dream? Maybe their frequent recollection in rainy autumn sunsets falsifies.

When we celebrated the ploughing of the fields, the priest, bending over the ground to trace the first groove, at the foot of the Acropolis,

would recite: “Never refuse fire and water to anyone. Never mislead anyone who asks for the way. Never leave a corpse disinterred. Don’t kill the bull that pulls the plough.” Beautiful words, really; — just words, then, like now, fire was for burning your neighbour’s fields, water to flood them, the bull, red ribbons round its neck, is boiling in the thief’s pot. Only the plough, by itself (maybe driven by an invisible hand) still ploughs the barren fields now overgrown with mallows and wild lilies.

18.10.1968 30

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From GESTURES,

1969—70

MIDNIGHT

Every night, on the twelfth stroke of the clock, the old woman pushes her hair back from her eyes with a strange motion as if catching a thief by the jacket jumping from the window. Then she wakes completely. She puts on her slippers. She approaches the mirror. She looks at herself in it; she looks at the space between her eyes looking back at her from behind the _ mirror, at the spiderwebs, at the drops of damp. She hears, just then, the fine leaves of gold falling in the paved yard, the snail crawling up the big store-room padlock, the worms that stir in the flower pots and the old coffins. The dead, she says, don’t wear out shoes — they walk softly, on soft things. The dead walk inside us or sometimes, to economise, even wear our shoes.

ODL 969 35

IN

THE

DARK

The lamplighter went by at sunset with his ladder, he lit the lamps of the island as if drilling holes in the darkness, as if drilling big yellow wells. In the weils the lamps, upright, swayed, copper-green, drowned; a cross flashed on the belfry of Saint Pelagia; a dog barked behind the stable, another at the Customs; the tavern sign dripped blood; the man, barechested, held a big red knife; the woman, uncombed, beat the eggwhites in a bowl. x

18.9.1969 36

UNCERTAIN

DECISIONS

At night, in the harvested field around the house, graze big, black, invisible horses tied by one leg. The sound of their hooves on the dry haystacks is the only sign of life in the world. The deep, concave moon shines over the Customs, inhabited by an extreme futility. And of course — he said — the feeling of beauty is always interwoven with that familiar yet forgotten sense of the futile. If they knock on the door, don’t open. Let them break it down. Why should we still fool ourselves? No, no; you’d better open. Maybe they’ll bring that wooden horse — you know.

2.10.1969 37

MOTIONLESS

SWAYING

As she jumped up to open the door, she dropped the basket with the spools of thread — they scattered under the table, under the chairs, in improbable corners — one that was orange-red got inside the lamp glass; a mauve one deep in the mirror; that gold one — she never had a spool of gold thread — where did it come from? She was about to kneel, to pick them up one by one, to tidy up before opening the door. She had no time. They knocked again. She stood motionless, helpless, her hands dropped to her sides. When she remembered to open — no one was there.

Is that how it is with poetry, then? Is this exactly how it is with poetry?

4.10.1969 38

SO?

¢

This place — he says — and the other place, seem inexhaustible; I have explored this house thousands of times, at all times, every corner, every inch — drawers, store rooms, wardrobes, the stairs,

beside the safe, behind the mirrors, in the chimney, under the heavy, immovable jar. But the other night I found an ancient coin in the ashtray — I never had one. One day as I opened the window facing west, I found a tree, full grown already — it was never there; I hadn’t planted it. On its branches hung small silver bells, threads, small mirrors, colourful cardboard harlequins, striped glass marbles, small white stuffed birds propped up with wire.

30.10.1969 39

SLACKNESS

That’s how — he says — you get used to everything; even what may have astonished us once is now common and trite. And it’s not only that things fade, our eyes fade too — now they turn away from painted glass, from strong artificial lights; — now they prefer dim corridors or indistinguishable underground passages — their uniformity like duration. And you're no longer surprised if it starts to rain at dawn, or when the town hall clock strikes 12. at noon, or when the hours that stand outside, indifferent, alone,

uncovered in the open air, are not soaked. An unknown woman wanders about the house, her hair uncombed, wearing slack nylon stockings that fall down her legs.

31.10.1969 40

AFTER

THE

RAIN

4

After the rain, the chirping of the birds sounds more emphatic, scattered, lonely. Mountains have suddenly grown taller, clouds too. Wet colours are bigger on the house walls — rose, pistachio, pale blue, the red canopy of the tavern, drops on the trees each dropping in a different rhythm, different time, like old clocks, big wooden clocks opened up for repair, their mechanisms exposed — cogs and more cogs, small gears, related movements, springs, sounds — all uncoordinated, left to a blind fate; — what word, I wonder, would set these broken down clocks with their tormented entrails in the right motion in perfect circles?

Ier eeTe 41

OBSERVING

The rider on his horse passed by behind the prickly pears. I saw him — he says; I recognize the prickly pears; I don’t know the rider. A bird flew away from the roof; it sat on the branch; it flew away again. A towel is blowing about on the clothes line — a pale blue stripe, a red one, an orange one; — they wave; I can discern in them the rhythmless gestures of the wind (aren’t they threatening’). I am happy I can still see — he says. I dictate what blind men play on their instruments in street corners. The accordion and the guitar are ancient masks of scared heroes, because heroes are scared and they imitate more than we do. x

53.11.1969 42

AT

LEAST

THE

WIND

Night. Dining room. Flies on the chandelier; flies in the tray, on the bread, on the glasses. The old man chews greedily; he spies on the other plates. White tablecloth, very white. The wind in the street with the street lamps. Ah the wind with its long, humming, shiny tubes secretly inserted in the walls, under the table, in the springs of big beds, sucking flies, paper napkins, sleep. Ah the wind — he said. He put his spoon down; he went out. We’d wait all night for his return dropping now and then small square ice cubes in the carafe.

9.11.1969 43

INDISPOSITION

He was almost sick next morning. He was pumped with words last night. He can’t bear words; he can’t shake them off. They’re painting sheer white the house across the street, indecently white. The voices of the decorators sound very loud in the winter light. One on the roof top has embraced the chimney as if fucking it. Thick drops of whitewash splash on the black soil with the rotten leaves. ‘\

14.10.1969 44

CROSSROADS

a

Wheel ruts from lost horse-carts on the muddy road. The cemetary was quiet after the rain. Drops hung flashing on the stone faces, as if the statues had cried without emotion last night. Everyone hurried on the way back. A woman stopped and looked back: — crosses, rusty lanterns, marble wings, marble collars; — the grass had grown.

“Come,” the man said; he pulled her by the hand. They stepped aside — the other horse-cart passed in the opposite direction, drawn by eight small horses; — the horses wore red hoods and gold tassels on their legs.

26.10.1969 45

BEFORE

SLEEP

She tidied up, she washed the plates. Everything is quiet. Eleven o’clock. She took off her shoes to go to bed. She delays. She lingers at the side of her bed. Has she forgotten something that her day does not want to end? — The house, then, is not square, nor the bed, nor the table. — Unconsciously she lifts her stocking before the lamp to find the hole. She sees nothing. Yet she is certain it is there — maybe in the wall, or in the mirror; — it’s through this hole she hears the night snort. The shadow of the stocking on the sheet is a net in cold water crossed by a blind yellow fish.

28.10.1969 46

FOR

REPAIR

’

Call the plumber, call the electrician, call the carpenter, the painter, the builder — the wall, the staircase, the table, the ceiling, the sofa, they are all falling apart, the bed and the grandfather clock — call the — call — the taps drip all night — they won't let me sleep — even if just to see their hands, their T-shirts stained from their tools, from the thick oil, from the whitewash,

from the tomatoes they ate in the light of the yard or from the pollen of a flower the old maid gave them secretly.

29101969 47

OMENS

She forgot herself looking at a gull flying over the sunbathed seastorm. A smile came over her face, tender, light, following the bird’s movements until it stopped with a shiver near her ear, weighing like a pearl earing. She bent her head. The bird was gone. On the hill, the governor’s house was still burning.

29.10.1969 48

THE

LAST

GRAPES

a

The last grapes were gathered in an earthenware basin. The church in the valley, shut now after the celebration, was silent again spreading its inner space to the hills across, the candles extinguished on their holders, the haze from the incense seeping slowly, pale azure, through the huts in the fields. The old woman looked up at the clouds; she listened to the creak of the woodworm in the old wooden icon and she crossed herself feeling her fingers stick from the sugar of the last grapes.

30.10.1969 49

INSTRUCTIONS

The hanged man and the tree; Ah no; the hanged man must be left out; — this vertical is too heavy; it splits the composition in two, it spoils the relationships of the lines; a diagonal might do better; — the density of the air, a red dot, a black one; the identical shadow that continues beyond the painting, outside it, free, unpretentious (it’s not your job anymore), maybe the shadow of the two birds carrying his worn out sandals flying over the carpenter’s shop in the suburb, high in the clouds. The wire (behind the painting), in an invisible corner, holds

firmly the painting hanging from a nail on the dining-room wall.

31.10.1969 50

PREPARATION

4

Dictionaries aspirins trees green red yellow leaves temporary measures tranquilizers pain relievers specifications misunderstandings conversions transferences deviations papers more papers piles of papers on the table on chairs on the bed on the floor bills bills electricity bills water bills telephone bills bills from the tax office paid off years ago bills never settled completely from unproven debts secret debts duplicates triplicates typed stenciled badly printed carbon copies written by an experienced and unhesitating hand copies of copies don’t talk don’t complain what’s the good of going to sleep you must get up early in the morning see what time it is put your papers in order a glass of water on the chair socks on the chair go to the market to get some polish black shoe-polish to polish your shoes to polish your hands and your face in the kitchen so that the collectors will not guess you’re not made-up, so black, so beautiful.

Loe 51

ENUMERATION

People stop in the street, they look. The numbers over the doors mean nothing. The carpenter is hammering a nail into a long narrow table. Somebody sticks a list of names on the telegraph pole. A piece of newspaper creaks, caught in the thorns.

The spiders are under the vineleaves. A woman got out of one house to enter another. The wall yellow and wet, its paint peeling off. A cage with a canary in the dead man’s window.

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SOLDIERS

AND

DOLLS

4

Maps, pins, lamps, crushing engines, uphill slope, wheels in wheels, intrigues; they shout, they run; One calis up after the other — who is the enemy? Smoke everywhere; nothing can be seen; — there yes, you say, without seeing; they aim, you aim.

night, — where to stay? — Who is the friend? — is the belfry, they say; The women

are left behind alone, far, in shapeless houses, without beds;

they make dolls from army coats with bullet holes, or holes burned by the cigarettes of soldiers who fell asleep or died in the snow — soft dolls, filled with bran; they paint their hands, their faces, their feet red with dye for Easter eggs; they give them to children to play with; they don’t play; they hang them from the tree in the yard, they use them as targets for their slings until sunset.

211.1969 $3

FROM

HABIT

Colours again — darker now; the dry vines dead yellow, olive green, burned roofs, above thick clouds, gluey, oily, like cold-cream in the small white jar the old woman is slowly opening; with a semicircular motion of her fingers she takes some and she spreads it absentmindedly, slowly on her face, although she knows that wrinkles can’t be smoothed away, that poems too die, that only the upright mirror is her dark sterile husband, standing, facing her, still in love without ever loving; — their rings hidden in the old grandfather clock, also, stopped for years.

5.11.1969 54

DISSOLUTION

Sometimes words come almost by themselves, like leaves of trees —

the invisible roots, the soil, the sun, the water have helped, old rotten leaves have also helped. Meanings can easily be attached like spider webs on leaves, dust and drops of dew sparkling with wavering flashes. Under the leaves, a young girl is disembowelling her nude doll; a drop falls on her hair; she lifts her head; she sees nothing; only the cold transparency of the drop dissolved over her body.

6.11.1969 55

THE

THIRD

ONE

The three of them sat before the window looking at the sea. One talked about the sea. The second listened. The third neither spoke nor listened; he was deep in the sea; he floated. Behind the windowpanes, his movements were slow, clear in the thin pale blue. He was exploring a sunken ship. He rang the dead bell for the watch; fine bubbles rose bursting with a soft sound — suddenly, “Did he drown?” asked one; the other said: ““He drowned.”’ The third one looked at them helpless from the bottom of the sea, the way one looks at

drowned people.

6.111969 56

AFTER

THE

RAIN

¢

It rained for days. Everything they were going to tell each other, carefully thought out, was postponed, folded up, packed away in their suitcases. They left. Now big snails stroll on the tiles in the yard carrying on their backs little towers and belfries; they climb up chrysanthemums, they enter a patient coolness. Helen stopped to look; she murmured, “Are snails happy, I wonder.” The others were silent. The question dragged itself with a quiet assurance, leaving behind it a damp silver line.

6.11.1969 57

IN

AND

OUT

THE

WINDOW

Out, big sunbathed clouds; the shadow of the church in the valley. The bread folded in a napkin hanging from the tree. The wind blows from the mountains, it enters small labyrinths under the staircase. The woman near the window is knitting a woollen vest. The man takes off his boots; he looks at his feet — his bare feet that step on soil. The woman puts aside her knitting needles; she gets up; she hesitates; she takes the boots; she puts her hands in them, she kneels, she crawls under the bed.

&.11.1969 58

REVERSAL a

Roots in the air; — two faces between them; the well was at the bottom of the garden — that’s where they had thrown their rings one day; then they looked up, very high up, pretending not to see the old woman shitting in the empty flowerpot as she bit into the big apple.

10.11.1969 59

AWAITING

HIS

EXECUTION

There, stood against the wall, at dawn, his eyes uncovered, as twelve guns aimed at him, he calmly feels that he is young and handsome, that he deserves to be clean shaven, that the pale pink distant horizon becomes him — and, yes, that his genitals retain their proper weight, somewhat sad in their warmth — that’s where the eunuchs look, that’s where they aim; — has he already become the statue of himself? Himself looking at it, all nude, on a bright day of the Greek summer, in the square above — looking at it standing upright himself behind the shoulders of the crowd, behind the hurrying

gluttonous tourist women, behind the three made-up old women wearing black hats.

i111 3969 60

INSATIABILITY 4

“Even from death?” he asked. “Yes, from death too,” he himself answered.

“Why?” he asked again. “I don’t know, I don’t know.” He was locking at his long, black fingernails. “From the coal,” he said. He felt ashamed. His nails turned white at once; — the imitation of the coal-miner had failed.

12.11.1969 61

WHITE

LANDSCAPE

He left unnoticed. Not a step was heard at the door. It was unbelievable that it didn’t rain at all during the night. The next day endless winter sunshine, like someone shaving in a white bathroom before a mirror wiped by an invisible hand with a soft, wet piece of paper, the razor dull, skin turning red, beard left in patches, and then that disconcerting smell of eau-de-Cologne.

ZEIT 969 62

THE

ABSENT

ONE

He passed noiselessly from room to room. In between, empty spaces — one room full, the other empty; the same further on. checkered squares, black, white, corridor tiles, squares rather —

suddenly that noise as if his shoes had kicked a metal object thrown purposely on the floor, or on the cast-iron leg of the big old bed under the sheets of which a stiff brown overcoat had taken on the shape of someone sleeping, pretending to be the one that had left.

i221 EDI69 63

DEPARTURES,

III

Slowly things empty, like those big bones one finds on the beach in summer — horse bones or bones of prehistoric animals; they are empty of the stuff inside, the marrow; all that remains is a solid white, a lack of colour, with invisible holes, like the colour rooms take when it rains violently. You hold the doorknob or the handle of a tea cup and you can’t tell whether you hold them or if they hold you or whether they, or you, can be held. And suddenly as you are about to drink your tea, you see between your fingers the porcelain handle by itself; — the cup is missing — you examine it: so white, so weightless, almost bone — you think it beautiful, shaped like a half zero — it longs to be complete, while, across, in the wall, through a deep crack, seeps the warm steam from the tea you did not drink.

13.11.1969

64

OF

MEMORY

Oid X-+ays of tubercular men in big yellow envelopes on top of the wardrobe, full of dust — night after night when the train whistled in the suburbs, nights with tali candle holders, on the floor, scattered small square pieces of paper that contained the powdered coughing medicine — when the glass spilled on the sheets, he stuck his legs out — his knees were thin, the hair dry — he had an erection — knocking on the door, loud knocking; we covered him up quickly; we ran in the corridor; we stood behind the door; we listened; — they didn’t knock again.

14.11.1969 65

RAIN

Alone he walks in the rain, he reaches his house,

he shakes his raincoat in the corridor, he hangs it up, he goes up the stairs, he stands before the window, he looks at the rain behind the panes,

he remembers the old rusty keys on the bench in the basement, he remembers that it never rains in the mirror and that it is meaningless whether it rains or doesn’t rain. Women’s bodies are now gray with black stripes.

28.12.1969 66

CIRCLE

The same voice, still hoarser now, told him panting, “This is where I end, this is where I begin” — always the same, a recurring circle, and in the circle the empty bed or the bare table with the lamp lighting two hands aimlessly moving removing two long elastic black gloves.

28,121 969 67

STILL

No more discoveries in that lightning-like dazzling glare, not even clever inventions. Objects around him, the brush, the comb, the ashtray had gradually lost their beautiful tangibility and, with that, their symbolism. Silence was taking hold of him, it asphyxiated him, warm, restful. But he still sensed, floating with some grace above his head, on the unrippled surface, a child’s paperboat, a shining orange peel and the handkerchief of the drowned man.

29.12.1969 68

FRESH

INSOMNIA

He suddenly halts in his sleep. He doesn’t want to stay any longer in the soft darkness. He brings his voice to rescue; “Here,” he says; he makes a mark; he lifts the old oil-lamp; he raises it; he raises it up high, still higher; the light flashes with a kind partiality on the faces of those sleeping, on the wooden beds, the rough blankets, a glass, a broad youthful sole. “I am the guard,” he says. No one has authorized him, — self-appointed guard of the fresh insomnia, guarding the sleep of the innocent ones. The thin old man half opens one eye: “For God’s sake, put that light out,” he shouts. He turns facing the wall, he conceals the light with his body as if he had stolen it.

IOL2ZAI69 69

UNNATURAL

BLOSSOMING

He wanted to scream — he couldn’t bare it any longer. No one was there to hear; No one wanted to hear. He himself was afraid of his voice, he drowned it inside him. His silence would explode. Parts of his body blew up in the air. He would collect them very carefully, silently, he would put them back in their place to fill the holes. And if he found by chance a poppy, a yellow lily, he would collect them too, put them in his body, as if they were part of him — that’s how he was, full of holes, strangely blossoming. x

S151 21 908 70

A

THREE

STOREY

HOUSE

WITH

BASEMENT

¢

On the third floor lived the eight poor students. On the second the five seamstresses with their two dogs. On the first the landlord with his adopted daughter. In the basement the baskets, the jugs, the rats.

The three floors used the same staircase. The mice went up the wall. At night, when the train passed, the rats went on the roof through the chimney and looked at the sky, the clouds, the garden railings, the lights of the restaurants, while the eldest seamstress shut the shutters,

her mouth full of pins.

214970 71

Crggos . 4-XIL 09.iss

From CORRIDOR AND STAIRS, 1970

COLLAPSE

Scraps of paper, iron junk, rusty sayings, poems, an empty stool on the empty table in the empty house; — you know them well; you still pretend you know nothing — to fool, to be fooled still more, to flatter, to be flattered (without a smile now) —

it was your duty — you said; — what duty? — you cover the black hole with your body while around you the flags moult like big, hollow, monochromatic leaves.

L722 1970 fh)

THE

UNHIDDEN

Nights, streets, faces, lights — masks of death; a door opens; a window shuts; the refrigerator of the dead woman was full of food; the blind stand in line in the underground station; — “Jet’s buy a new apartment;” “Jet’s buy a new car;”

“the shadow hid behind the curtain;” the circus was set up in the square; the loudspeakers blast;

people run, they stop, they eat standing, they sleep standing, they copulate standing — “theyre multiplying death,” he said;

(he said it turning to the wall) only the dead stay awake lying down — only they; their eyes are phosphorescent, they burn holes in the night; we are looking;

through these holes we see — faces, lights, bayonets, cars, the earthenware basin, the iron stairs, the bread, the knife, the turd, the sperm, the bone, the woman with the big dead fish,

the broken basin and the inverted stairs.

18.2.1970 76

SHADOWED

These eyes. (hollow) follow you, follow you, you cannot get away, leave, disguise yourself, they see you, they undress you, recording thousands of pointless gestures

on the great immobility, recording the broken down bed, the cardboard sword, the seven masks, the words, the verses, the poems —

glass walls, glass clothes, the cigarette tobacco glass, shattered glass; — new requisitions; the reservists too were mobilized — shifts and shifts;

the old women work in the underground glass factory. Continuation, time, repetition. Those eyes, not glass. Wait. Nothing.

77

WHAT

FOR?

Things age, wear out, become useless — illegal tobacco, shut rooms, flags, the dead, leaflets, statues,

the white curtain turned yellow, the mirror and the face in it are scratched, a moth has made its nest in the beautiful dress you wore that night, the coffee house on the street corner has closed down, the balcony collapsed among the nettles, the statue in the garden has lost its penis —

so, what is the good of sorrow, of hatred, of freedom, of the lack of freedom, the silver spoons, savings, the gold false teeth of the dead woman, the sun, the two candle holders on the table, aspirins,

love, poetry? It was sunny — July — they were wrapping the bread in a tea towel, the little boat was taking off, they were burning newspapers in a straw hat in the middle of the water.

202.1970 78

LEFT

BEHIND

The dead are forgotten, they forget. Their clothes wear out in wardrobes. The dead woman was taken to the mortuary. The canaries screeched at the top of the stairs. The neighbours gesticulated from their windows. The garbage man went by on time. The bells, the garbagecans, the papertrays,

the rotten lettuce leaves, the red strings. Dirty hands in pockets. The newlyweds entered the photographer’s studio across the street. Suddenly it was noon. Everything blacked out. The blind man, unshaven, bent, still looked through the keyhole of the door nailed shut.

20.21970 ye)

SATURDAY

11

a.m.

The women gather the clothes from the clothes line. The landlady stands in the doorway of the yard. One holds a suitcase. The other has a black hat on. The dead pay no rent. They have disconnected Helen’s telephone. The doughnut man shouts on purpose: “Doughnuts, warm doughnuts.” The young violinist at the window —

“warm zero-round doughnuts,” he says. He throws his violin down on the sidewalk. The parrot looks over the baker’s shoulder. The landlady tinkles her keys. The three women go in, shut the door.

20.2.1970 80

IN

THE

VOID

Water falling on stone, the sound of water in the winter sun, cry of a lonely bird in the hollow sky searching for us again, implying (what “yes” implying?) falling from high up on parked busses filled with tourists centuries dead.

Zee 81

970

UNCONNECTED

The baby cries in the room with the fireplace. The priest walks down the hill. Below are the other mountains. Snow, clouds, sunshine, window panes. The crow high above; its shadow on the ground. Here, here, present, absent,

present

in the general absence — the stinging wind waving in the street a colour photograph of a familiar team of football players.

La:21970 82

UNACCEPTABLE

He stands before the marble table. He persists. He chips a block of ice with a smali hammer. Bits fly loose, melt. The cold numbs his fingers, his body. He persists. A statue, he says, of warmth — the absent warmth, the desired, he says. The ice melts. The statue melts. The water runs on the marble. The roaring of the water is heard in the water pipes in the walls, under the floor, under the black and white kitchen tiles, in the earthenware drainpipe in the yard, under the ground among the insatiable roots. The sick woman calls from the inside room. He wipes his hands quickly on a towel. He lights the lamp. His hands tremble. “It’s ready,” he says. “I'll bring it.” The light flickers on the big bed on the moulting blankets full of holes. The water runs in the gutters. They both know it.

4.3.1970 83

PARTIAL

With that partiality of one who is disobedient to death, the cunning one, the hypocrite, the obstinate, he emphasises things that are insignificant or nonexistent — the feather of the dead bird on the thorns, a window cut into the blind wall, the stripes on the wall — a drawing on an urn, the beautiful archer with the big lilies, something invisible the archer aims at in the distance while the two dead, their backs turned, raise carefully before the window the white, square, stretched sheet.

4.3.1970 84

THE

ESSENTIALS

g

He sews the buttons on his coat awkwardly, with a thick needle, with thick thread. He talks to himself:

Did you eat your bread? Did you sleep well? Were you abie to talk, to stretch your arm? Did you remember to look out of the window? Did you smile when you heard knocking on the door?

If it’s always death — he comes second. Freedom always comes first.

4.3.1970 85

CONSCIOUS

No, no — he says again. No, no. He turns his clothes inside out, he turns his glass upside down, he turns the water inside out, he turns death inside out,

he wears his shoes on his hands,

he wears his gloves on his feet. “You are a liar,” they tell him. They get angry. The three women laugh on the balcony. He does not answer. He remains motionless. A fly sits on his cheek. The three women laugh on the balcony. They are young. They rustle. That’s what he wants.

4.3.1970 86

DESERTION

g

Dental surgeries have multiplied in our poor suburb, so have chemists, coffin makers. The evenings are green light bulbs over doors whose paint is peeling, long stripes of light. A tap has been forgotten running all night at Crow’s sidestreet in front of the flowershop, the barbershop. Someone

is wiping his shoes before the door taking a long time as if about to enter an empty hail with bright waxed marble floors, the space is unfamiliar, equaily unfamiliar the steps he takes, the movement, the lack of windows, the silence, the key, the handkerchief.

16.3:1970 87

MEMORIAL

SERVICES

The young stonehand on the chair; the headless torso before the mirror; a Sole in its marble sandal walking in another direction (not unsuspecting) among useless objects, paper roses, green asphodels. “At least, these,” — he said — “these are not lost; not everything is lost — you know.” “Nothing is lost,” he added; (blackmail showed

on his hands). ‘‘Nothing is lost,” repeated the old women, cleaning the wheat in big white platters, boiling the wheat in a wide copper pot. “Nothing; nothing,” they repeated and cried leaning their heads against the shoulders of the solid steam in the kitchen. Aunt Laho brought the tray and the sugar, placed them on the table, stood aside, turned to the wall licking her fingers.

17 31970 88

YOUNGSTOWN

STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

ue S |

A NG AU HAVI .c) W7-COW-306