Translated from the Greek by Viktoras Iliopoulos
Just before you got up
Don't say you didn't crave the peacock's feathers,
a dress sweeping the dance floor in a waltz.
And even if the heartbeat finally stole your crown
when the bravest of them looked you in the eyes,
do not say he was a conqueror;
he had fallen to his knees.
The backbone of light
We stretch the memory of the sky
with our white, white bones.
This task hurts.
We uphold the stature of myths.
Helots or children, with some kind of self
—and with flesh and a cross too—
we dry up in the fever of a progress
that might have once concerned us.
Fierce country,
you rub our vein with thorns, you chop up speech, you cut
our soul in pieces, how many syllables, how many letters
make up mourning, what a fine, never-ending chirp—
I no longer want to save you.
Free hand
I raise my right hand, I say heil chest.
I close my eyes, I say heil target.
with the left one on my belly, I say heil flag.
and they shoot mercilessly,
no one can find me
they focus on what is being said
infamous non-existence, unjustified emptiness, blah blah
and they line up the details against the wall.
but I live
—I dance chaos
my name is Moralina, but I am not she.
my heart burns its clothes in a bin.
so her fire can rescue from the tear gas
anything worthwhile.
this is how I breathe
how can I put it simply?
out in the world you lose
only nights.
The Narrative of a 20th-Century Descendant: A Hole
in History
I stand at the center of a circle. With a radius between an invisible
self and a definite other.
Ready to believe a story about my life that strangers,
centuries ago, articulated, grabbing with sounds—brutal
gestures—the jaws of existence.
The story was heard. In untold places, countless variations.
But always the same sound; of monotonous Existence.
Unmistakable oratorio from ravenous mouths.
How can you break the chain of hunger.
It embraces us, it unites us [
] It suffocates us.
Every brilliant crack I opened
was deceptively called emptiness.
Atlas
With my hands fixed on the clouds, I demonstrated my innards.
One shape encases the other, the small sinks into
the big, royal clouds rise in concentric circles,
and vertigo—the sky a bottomless well—naked creatures
falling and perishing, and all that was once dissimilar
is violently devoured by infinity.
Ephemeral the borders of truth. At times I was a shepherd, at times a
Titan. But in every version of my myth—as
they told it, as they wrote it—I would climb to the peaks of
Paradise. I would touch the stars.
But no mercy for the highlands.
On another shore now
Birds were tied to their feet, all kinds of feathers.
Boatmen await them next to the cape.
Those in love will fall weightless
from the rock
into the waters,
from the air
into the foam
(others unknown)
Rowing they will find themselves beyond the border, and—
Eftychia Panayiotou (born Nicosia 1980) is a poet, copy editor, and translator of poetry (Anne Carson, Anne Sexton, Lord Byron, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley) based in Athens. She has published four books of poetry. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and journals in thirteen languages. She is also active on the video poetry scene.
Viktoras Iliopoulos is a literary translator specializing in Greek, Macedonian, Albanian, and Czech. His most recent translations of the Macedonian poet Andrej Al-Asadi will be published in the spring 2024 edition of World Literature Today. He has a master’s degree in Balkan Studies from Charles University in Prague and is an instructor of Modern Greek and Albanian.
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