Eu sei que é suspeito. Depois do europeu, raia a tangente do colaboracionismo e traição à pátria. E, para cúmulo deste patricídio, as linguas pátria, tanto a helénica como a lusa, também não estão aqui representadas. Apontem o dedo à minha ignorância da primeira e à ilusória tentativa de conquista das publicações literárias anglo-saxónicas. Mas a coisa é um sabor que vem de longe. Vem das aulas de filosofia, da mitologia grega, de Homero, Tucídides e Kafavis, da arquitectura clássica, das ilhas, do verão mediterrânico, do branco e do azul intenso, do Zorba (que os gregos não gostam mas eu gosto), da Rembetika, do Feta, Uzo, Metaxa e das nativas. As nativas, meu Deus, as nativas! Por tudo isto e mais umas coisitas...S'agapo Ellada!
P.S. - Se não perceberem quem são as personagens, ou o que estou a dizer, vão ao Google que está lá tudo.
"We know one thing
From the Gods:
To die is not a good thing.
For if it were,
They too would die."
Sappho
"And this Sappho danced on the grass
and danced and danced and danced.
It was a death dance."
Anne Sexton
Kallichoron
Some lovers,
Like dolphins,
Make no effort
To swim.
___________
"Kallichoron", the Well of the Fair Dances
Thiasos
Reason makes strange angles with wit’s brisk brim. Welcome to the loft of books’ formation. If there was an arm, at the back of this fist, then pens would become beehives. The empty sleeve recedes to find solution in knead life. Leather keeled revenge for Olympus Gods’ firebranded buffcoats. Elbows in knees, keyed for rage, the feeble mind, like a single helm, makes no pilgrimage to Aegean fountains.
_________________________
In ancient Greece, groups of people who gathered in worship around a specific God or group of Gods were called a "Thiasos."
Persephone
That long legged
Dark ponytail girl
Christened my world
Orthodox grey.
In time of dinosaurs,
When will it change?
Pay no mind,
For the trick
Of this foolish game
Is to conceal
The bright colorful seeds
Where everything else
Is dim.
Demeter
Now the deed is done.
With a plan well construed and the act played,
Feisty Hades snapped tongue and spilled Mother’s milk.
Springing from Eleusis’ cloven floor in snake driven coach,
Abducted startled Persephone slipping further than deep shadows,
While,
Mother Earth enraged by the consummated plan,
Harnessed her bitterness with scouting silver gauntlets,
Clinching her fists from Pole to Pole,
Beat fetal Icebergs to a pulp huffing and puffing
And covering her lap with a propelled frozen shawl,
Calling for Baby Girl with a howling blizzard’s voice,
She wondered mountain gorges with ice-pick cursed words
Addressed to the King of Tartarus.
Thus was mankind ensnared in a white frozen crust
While hunger lodged in hunting grounds
Of mammoth ruled painted caves.
…
Hermes (who was an able diplomat) followed
The orange blossom trail to Nekromanteion where
Pretty Girl had negotiated the Styx and in awe saw floating
Garlands sparkle in the embellished gloomy river stream.
With masterly word by word he mediated the scale’s plates
Saying - It’s a freak thing that beauty should reside in darkness
While death stalks the Earth
For,
It’s not in the nature of the world that tenderness and
Prettiness should take residence in the realm of the Underworld.
(…)
Days have no credit here.
(…)
You see, Young Girl (that wasn’t at all anorexic) who had
(to whom it may concern), kept her virginity dairy fresh
Was swindled in the plot.
(…)
The Underworld King, pale heart warming spewing infernos,
Promising Poor Girl a one-way ticket home,
Brewed some cunning
From seven dead pomegranate seeds.
(…)
A mysterious thing life is.
That we should gain the land both blessed and cursed
and furnished with the changing seasons,
While Hades, a caring and attentive husband,
obtained (as it’s so often the case),
a bitter mother-in-law.
[Her me s]
I got my brand new legs today.
They’re made of Kevlar
Hyper-solid from sole,
To knave
Sprint faster than
Every Harry, Tom, Dick and Dave
Penny
will
sure
love
me
know
We’ll do the
Dirty did
In
The tool shed.
Five brothers
Will play
No more.
Olympus will know
They cannot rub my chin.
The diet will improve
From Hustler
To
T.S. Eliot.
Yeah!
Penny
Sure
Loves
Bikers.
Somewhere Under Cassiopeia
Pale moon,
Be evidence for me.
Round and fat,
Pregnant with lust,
Erotic pilgrim of,
Turkish dreams.
I sit by the willows,
They who
Softly lean back
Their necks in the tempest,
Under unchosen grim stars,
White teeth emerging like,
A cold frost.
Bewildered by all this wonder,
Somewhere under Cassiopeia’s,
Uttered onelyness.
I am breathing still,
Captain of my soul,
Ugly as God made me,
Still bachelor but seaworthy,
Stormbound,
Without compass.
Naming the Dragon
In Ancient Greece,
Where deadly-glance foreseers,
Compelled snakes to embellish a spiteful woman,
There lived a shadow that made good its gift of prophetic vision.
Guarded treasures more craved than the Golden Fleece
Were hushed in deep sacred wells.
Yet, for reasons unknown,
Plato built a cave of a philosophical nature.
But perfect Apollo could not be pacified
Or charmed with Phoebus monarchy.
It is expected of restless young men
To hunt shadows with sunray bullets,
For sport or simple cruelty.
Now silenced and slain into sleep,
Vaporous Ancient Arcane Knowledge,
Escaping through crevasses,
The Delphic Oracle,
Overdosed high priestesses
With Inhaled prophecies of a blurred future.
Tumescent Sirens
Tumescent Sirens in their ocean beds shriek.
A cockle, a pumping muscle of soot and rust,
Warms my hands too close to powder.
Hear my heart dangerously imploding.
The chariot of Death paces silently by.
The clock shows itself from the inside,
Ticking hours to eternity.
Here are my gifts – it whispers,
Then walks away, he’s back subdued,
Burdened by the shoulder of life.
Korítsi
There are things
That in you become so simple.
A movement of the brow
When you smile like spring opening.
Sometimes,
When air is undersized around me,
You
Always answer in frail silence.
There are things
In you that make me travel forever.
In the stillness
Of your hands there is a universe,
Finger in lips,
To hush me when there’s an enormous heartbeat.
Sappho [1]
Pay no mind to old
Men’s songs for they
Know not what they
Sing.
Play for fools even
If they know not
What they hear
Within.
I’m not estranged to
Love but somewhere
Within you I have no
Voice.
Sappho [2]
I cherish silence
Though I cannot
Share it today
So, listen.
Far from the Gods
We are happier
For they keep their
Treasures.
I offer a red ribbon for
Your hair though your
Mother embellished you
With flowers.
Sappho [3]
Above all you love Cleis
More than any other
She’s yours to call
Mother.
I know you love Gyrinno
More than Mnasidica
Though the first is
Clumsy.
Listen to young brides
Sing Adonis limbs
They dress Sappho for
Town.
Sappho [4]
I had to mould a heart
Of clay to enjoy a little
Love under Paphos’
Stones.
To whom does it matter
The Gods if lips are of
Arcadia, Lacedaemon or
Athens?
Remember me well. Sacrifice
A fat lamb to the lady of Cypris
When you’re far from
Mytilene.
Sunflower
Look at lonely Clytia,
Apollo’s love made her no return.
Her own tears and the chilly dew
Are her only food.
Sitting all day long upon the cold ground
Her unbound tresses streaming over her shoulders.
Nine days she sat
Tasting neither food nor drink.
Mad Clytia gazed on the sun ‘till
Her limbs rooted in the ground.
Thermopylae
Do you recall Sparta?
In that final night
When you anointed your black hair
We made a son I never saw
You smiled
Although you knew
I was one of the three-hundred.
Adonis in Cyprus
Rugged coast
On its shores.
We know
Of the Peloponnesian
Mother-land
Who may well
Have been Adonis.
Here,
Diversified fields
And vineyards
Are intersected
By barbed-wire.
Hoplites have carved
For themselves
Beds of such tremendous depth,
That travelling beyond
Is strenuous and tedious.
Adonis,
My passport shields
The petty kingdoms
Into which Cyprus
Is divided.
Pandora
Heart dry as Ethiopia
'cause she’s not there.
Cracked,
There’s infinitely nothing'
'cause she’s no more,
Never will be.
Little music box,
Pandora’s box,
Chinese box,
Drawer,
Airtight,
Hermetic.
To Mention the Name of that Blood is Taboo
I
1. Observe that awful sanctity.
Unlawful to lay hands,
Without express command,
If deigned to touch a subject.
2. Tumour in the back,
Whose pranks made
Roman and Sabine priests,
With bronze razors,
3. Cut an inscription in stone,
An expiatory sacrifice of a lamb,
Not to be brought into Greek sanctuaries,
An iron weapon in the Trojan War,
4. A sharp splint of quartz
That must afterwards be buried
Once the Pawnees cease
To use stone arrow-heads.
5. Everything new is apt
To awe and dread the savage
Causing intense hot weather
To excite so many favourite haunts.
6. A succession of bad seasons,
Who traced the origin of evil
To a watermill when occasion served
As a charm for banning ghosts,
7. Bringing home at night a sword,
A knife, a gun-barrel, a needle,
Or a fish-hook to shut the door
Till you come out again.
8. Discoursing in the window,
Your pocket is quite enough
To transmit iron rings and small bells
To the reaping-hook on a Jew’s harp.
9. Dangerous classes impose
The same restraints on manslayers,
Menstrual women, their vessels,
Garments, property,
10. Childbirth, fratricides and mourners,
To help convey all intercourse,
And almost all communication
With mankind into the grave.
II
1. The country is no longer in order.
A little girl turns up the soil,
The earth of this grave,
Yet knows nothing of women’s affairs.
2. Water from the river approaches
The place where the blood is taboo;
No boy will mention the name
Of that blood.
3. “What human vision could spy them
Glimmering far down in the dim depths
Of the green water?” Utterly deathless,
love-blinded from above,
4. They were soon swamped
Into this river’s language. Their hands,
Like Mycenaean mariners upon eleven sails of ships,
Freighted more ignorance than any others,
5. Innocence of youth fully retained, very much
From the heart, but one that still exists.
Then there was nothing but the air
And the swiftness of a little cloud.
6. At that moment he wheeled about
To where the sun goes down,
With necklaces of elk's teeth abreast,
And eyes that glimmered like the day-break.
7. She hid herself
Among the reeds for the day,
Covered her head carefully
With her blanket,
8. And after dark
Returned to her secluded home
Knowing there is a bright world.
But whether the part of man
9. Was played by a lesser god
Or an image we do not know.
Water spirits reflect a real custom
Of sacrificing girls to be the wives
10. Of great serpents or dragons.
It would probably be a mistake
To dismiss all these tales
As pure inventions of the story-teller.
III
1. Be a sun-charm.
Killing God is a separate act.
We need not wonder to discern
The flimsiness of the logical foundation
2. On which such high hopes were built.
Drowning is to clutch at straws,
Without any garments.
What is the meaning of burning?
3. Investigation of the answer seems obvious.
Fires are often alleged to be kindled
To the purpose of burning
The object of the poem.
4. Yet, the object of the poem is to explain.
Suppose that when sometimes
A tree and sometimes a living tree
Can scarcely doubt
5. The beneficent spirit of vegetation.
Though burned with its branches,
It’s too foreign to escape misinterpretation
Such as Judas Iscariot, Luther or a witch.
6. The complete silence of the poet
Personifies the hymn of vegetation
In Demeter and Persephone.
The grim lord of the Dead smiled.
7. The dead smiled and obeyed.
The corn sprouted from clods
Of ploughed fields
And mother fell upon her neck.
8. The sitting candidates veiled.
And in silence veiled a language
Barren as the brown expanse of
A field of golden grain.
9. The riddle is not hard to read.
Six months of every year the living are above
And the remainder of the year
The dead are underground.
10. I’m drowning.
And there’s no relieve from
The melancholic gloom and decay of autumn
To the fresh brightness of spring’s verdure.
