It was dawn around the afternoon. Again

absentminded, he says ...... No, dear light, I say

if you want, I can count the hours from the beginning.

Again, he says,

confused is the poet. Everybody is awakening, and he,

wrapped in his deep dream

sleeps. In his hands unpublished pamphlets, old maps

of Cyprus, drafts of revolutions.

Stop, then. Stop confusing me, change the

expression, the structure, speak straight. The clock works and

you are delayed constantly,there is no other day there is no tomorrow,

will you speak?

I swallow the howl of Ginsberg, my voice

is lost in banks, in between loans and

loan sharks, for years now testing people

and new tricks

"I refuse to resign from my persistent idea",

the one hidden in flower-pots and glossy buildings, that

"we are in rats' alley". The roads

are filled with rubbish, the houses don't have

windows anymore, and my other self knows that

those who have left for the hunt of the big sea urchin

have filled their hands with spikes, and the swimmer with

one leg, slaps on his forehead the hopelessness of his dead

glory.

I begin not to understand. You said you will write simply

and now you are mentioning dreams. Dreams?

They are not dreams, they are

your right, your left wall, that which you cannot see,

because they denied you the eyes, those who were frightened that

you would see the trees blossom, the poem to form.

That is why I will keep on writing until the last uprooting, I will

persist being busy with "petty" things

I will be falling, until I reach the lowest depths, and

I might as well be

the glass basket, filled with impregnated dreams,

stones, seas. But, don't ask me what is Poetry,

clean, lyrical, surreal. All are eggs

in the same basket, ready to break with one movement.

I speak to you and

you scratch your left knee, recollecting times on

heavy tables, beds with red blankets,

darkness, darkness! But, believe me,

there will be no light, when you decide to get up,

with eyelids closed and wrinkled skin,

feeling for switches and pots

there will be no light, when you will be recalling the devil, and

he will have tired of you, the stillness, the dust, the

lethargy

you will be trying to cross out, but you will not find a pencil,

nowhere, never.

What are you, then? I am

the armour of my defeated ancestor, I curry in my

bones the injustices of my old self,

records of planets, messages of lost cities, and

perhaps I am

the damned of my years, the surrendered in the

hell of my ego, the radical poet, who

sees nothing breathing. Finally, perhaps I am

the only child of the devil and I fight

to hold on in between light and darkness.

"I ended up perceiving as sacred the disorder of my mind",

the sarcastic voice within dreams is hunting me

everywhere, on the glass resides the eye of yesterday's

god, in my garden the marble is blossoming, you see

how strangely I am governed by meanings, by thoughts?

You will say, you mislead me, friend, you annoy me with heavy

things you forget the National issue, you have to speak

about the stolen countries, name the responsible ones

now, now. Look, I tell you, a bit further up, left,

no, more to the right, all over my body

names, colours, waters, explosions, names again.

Angelika spent years under Hitler.Now, all is fake,

breast, teeth, hair, she says

put them all in a sack and hit them with a stick.

And you can be sure, you are always hitting the right one.

You attack me. You insist that I am wrong, you ask

me to reconsider, somebody has to be governing, and I

shout

I detest every government, like the stupid

army socks that prickle on every step...

You are an anarchist! Each one playing his own tune, I say, beyond

all this though

"Fortunate is he who still has a country", and alas, misfortunate

the refugee whose soul was softened with

money. He has no voice, no cry,

"wattane, wattane", to sing hitting his

breast, gesturing to the places that were stolen from him to

demand the house, the sun, his days. For

hours

he sits, watches television, stroking hedonistically his

soft parts, and tomorrow the same again, and forget Karpassi,

I have settled. You are unfair friend,

things are not like that. I wish I were the

liar, the blind one, the ignorant one, and to live on the day of

verification, if it will ever come. You are over-reacting!

You enter in strangers orchards, you pluck plants which do not

belong to you, you do not know, you do not know. What I know

l learnt it myself, so you learn too that

father was not god and those that providence ignored,

we became poets, to lift buckets of bile from

strangers wells. These wells

others have dug them, and when they found no water,

they abandoned picks, tools, they disappeared in holes like

worms. I do not understand,

you are delirious, change your way, sleep to find

your senses... At last I woke up.

St John the Recluse, fifty years

of dry bread and water in a closet,

beware of traps, he warned me, the loquaciousness

kills the truth, close your eyes, go away, go away.

Where

can I go, where, I was asking. I have friends, family

a divided country, I have the light, it is challenging me...

I am afraid of the sea, I am afraid of the sea and everybody will

say that

I am a dreamer and a madman, who says

cliche phrases. But, who else lived for thirty-two

centuries within her deep entrails? At last

I woke up.

Even in my sleep you are hunting me, you change

mask, you become a devil and string, you tighten my

larynx, you test me if

I am a pure blooded offspring of Onesilus, or if ,

since then, the wives of our grandfathers went out to the

accacia forests and changed the lineage

without thinking of us, tomorrow that we were going to ask for

explanations, before the council, before you

who

is looking at me with a sideways glance. Your sly eye casts a shadow upon half the room, in the other half, crumpled papers,

flags, wings, tomorrows bread. And I "remain in

complete confusion, innocent". You offer me a cigarette,

I do not want one, I tell you, I have stopped it together with the cheap

slogans, I am still thinking of inventing a new

voice, different, frightening

without sound and colour, an insensitive voice that can

put the wolf to sleep and wake up the lamb, to sit

by the hours at the traffic lights and scare the

people, in the evenings with a leash

to tie up the leg of the establishment and to ponder...

Enough, enough philosophising and devilish thoughts

you are not going to become a hero, there is no hemlock anymore,

be content with whatever you can, with whatever is allowed for you.

My dear Light,

my country has no rivers, her children died in

one summer, now, half disabled, half

bleeding - don't ask how, why, where I see blood -

I wait

for her to be glorified, as I have waited for years, as the pirates were leaving

the pirates were coming, and she

placing salt upon her wounds, started the births again,

so, it is not for me that I water, evenings mornings and

afternoons, the daphne at the dry river. Did you understand?

Yes, but for whom

now that the cowardly traitors have become resistance front liners and

the essence of the struggle is lost in jealousy, for whom

do you stay awake at night sweating, gathering old photographs,

documenting of mountains and seas, talking to old people

who do not listen, running, running? Tomorrow, tomorrow

the new moon will come out, the children will be asking

for fairy-tales, and our books will have been

replaced with videos, you tell me

who is going to speak on behalf of us?

Light, light, light, light, light, light, light! In the bottom

drawer I place my shadows in order, in the top one your white

shirts, in the third which cannot be seen

the secret voices of your waves, the ones that did not

reach the shores, accompanied by the seagulls and the pebbles,

as the seas were full of pirates and our promontories

did not have castles. These voices

one day, when the children will be watching the open sea with

their mouths agape, and in darkness they will be waiting the new

ship,

I will let them celebrate their first Sunday,

to climb on the dunes kissing the

skin of the children. Everything

you say is good so is that which you have not said, but

in the event

of the wave being ferocious, to be out of control and

cover the town, in the deepness of the night,

who is going to mend the cracks on the walls of

the houses, who is going to ring the bells,

do you understand the problem, do you understand my message?

You are tiring me,

you cut my nails deep, I cannot bear the pain of

your weight, your saliva is poisoning me, enough,

enough. And I believed you

"My times are in your hands", and you said my hands

were stolen by your hours, we lost the sequence of

meaning, we will become a génération perdue, light, my

light

turn the handle n o w, squeeze n o w into the

room, acknowledge n o w the corners that you did not meet.

Otherwise, tomorrow

the key will have rusted in the flower pot, it will have been

stolen by passers by, and even if you find it

I will have become one with the humidity, you will be trying in vain to

see me, I will have been stolen by the darkness.

20-28.8.82

NOTES

1. I am referring to "The Howl" by Allen Ginsberg, Contemporary Poetry, Boukoumanis Publ. Athens 1974.

2. p - America, "The Howl", Allen Ginsberg. (IBID).

3. p 126, Chapter B Wasteland T.S.Elliot, The Faber Book of Modern Verse, The Faber and Faber Limited Publs. London 1982.

4. Egyptian swimming champion who lost his foot in an accident.

5. p - "Alchimie du Verbe", Arthur Rimbaud, (publishers, date of publication) "...Je finis par trouver sacré le désordre de mon spirit."

6. (Angelica)

7. "Alone", Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Aris Dikteos, World Anthology of Poetry, G. Fexis Publs, Athens 1960.

8. "My Country, my country" The wail of Palestinian women when their husbands leave to fight in war.

9. Greek village occupied by the Turkish army since 1974.

10.Contemporary Saint who lived for more than 50 years on the banks of The Nile surviving on seeds and water.

11. King of Salamis (dates) who reunited the Kingdoms of Cyprus in order to fight against the Persians (498 BC).

12. p. 40, Michalis Katsaros (1924-), Of the Saduchi's, Kedros Publs, Athens, 1977.

13. Chapter 31, Verse 15, Hymns

14. Translated as Lost Generation

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