KATERINA ILIOPOULOU

INSOMNIA

Two wooden beds united
“Twins” as they say in English
Between them a stream
Motionless
In the evening she falls into it
She is microscopic
To reach him
She does such things
She tests herself
She practices surrendering
Then she withdraws
Drains herself of all traces of him
She falls asleep
With passion
With dedication
She becomes a thing of the night
She becomes a thing of the night not much different from the wooden furniture the curtains the cool wind and the lost horizon the glowing ship hanging from the sky and crossing it and crossing him too announcing departure while this silent correspondent is left behind. He will have the privilege of entering his dreams holding them like an ice cube slowly melting leaving a slight burn in the middle of his palm. He will be exposed to the white movie passing by obliged to endure non existent facts stories whose narrators get bored midstream testimonies whispered without a cause ( still mercilessly). He will want to blow the dust away the dark veil the trembling sound of their persistence. Then he will get up to photograph the night. He will put his camera on the ledge he will adjust the lens and smoke and wait and the camera will click very quietly very subtly very secretly will steal every trace of light and bring it back like a hunting dog. And there is the sky is blue, the grass is green and orange, the rocks whiter than any washed bone anyone has ever seen. Bone flowers that have just blossomed. He will cut them. He will dig a lair of sleep

From “The book of soil”
Translated by Vassilis Manoussakis, Edward Smallfield, Richard Pierce

I

I sink into the neck of night
I the spider hanging by a thread
I hold my breath and harken
Not knowing if it is a sound or a touch
If it is my own vibration or something outside vibrating me
Limit of my skin
When I reach it I know that I am at the edge of my thread
Theseus or Orpheus?
Whatever the case, the story of a betrayal

II

Lying on my back I float into the night
But the night crosses me as well
The wake that opens ceaselessly talking
Things disappear leaving a thin outline
Which I take with me
It will prove useful later
When the horizon is gone

III

I see the fuzz of the night waxing and waning
The eyes of small predators flaming
I see death scratching on the door
The commonplace adventure of his wandering
I see the persistent memory gathering in the corners
Dust sawdust whatever does it for her
And when she comes a smile will be enough
A shoelace some sand in between the toes
Will be enough to unleash upon me
The enormous wave of all “astonished things”
Well, goodnight, I say, and I pull
The sheet over my head.

IV

With my blind gaze
I see the voices of naked bodies
Their taste ripens in my mouth
Like a language that will never be heard
I embrace my body
And I find your body
I embrace all my expressions
The ones that you speak
The ones you know me with
The way I do not know myself

V

My blind gaze meets my other gaze
That is imprisoned in things
And recognizes it as a precious memory
If everything I see is transformed into memory
I am the monument of my gaze
In a dead world
Who will remember me?

From “The book of soil”
Trans. Vassilis Manoussakis and Valerie Coulton

Where is Pablo Frank?

Appears bird eagle sky clouds, soaring, wings spread, navigation, wings still. Appears boy drenched tanned climbing the iron staircase naked sole on the narrow step muscle tone on leg flexes on the metal he reaches the top falls. A fraction of the fall freezes now hangs upright with his head on the side as if by an invisible noose (made of air?). Appears a canopy of reeds empty chairs on the sandy beach, trailer, water, rippled surface. Appears turn at a dirt road, low stone structure (sheepfold?) closer run down wooden door open window in the background you see through it the hills but before darkness half-open door, the sun bouncing off the white wall thorns high above blossomed they tremble. Appears plowed field dirt telephone poles and hills and forward movement you do not have time to see it all it is trembling horses in the field a tail moving out of the corner of the eye, appears a canopy with gaps through it the sky, deserted sand with litter chaise lounge on the left in the background uninhabited reeds sky appears lusterless crow on the ground taking off emptying a black wing it takes off, pier salt lake dull, fishing cabin deserted it leaves, appears dry bush short leaves shiver reflection runs up ahead field with animals young donkey, small dull close watching for a moment black velvet eye wanders, dirt clods appear ant carrying a thorn appear wires horizontally in the sky, close stones pebbles wet white on black appear waves ripples of water Be not afeard the isle is full of noises.

Trans. Vassilis Manoussakis and Valerie Coulton
From “The book of soil”

The young swimmer's song

His feet are gripping the cement
His breath is enormous
Invocation to endurance
arranged along his vertebrae
Now the small structure made of bones is crouching
His immobility reminds you of a lizard.
(As if it has always been there
And now it’s gone
The eyes cannot be satisfied)
And now he is suddenly falling
Upright like an angel
Even the birds fall toward the sky
Every flight is a fall

As he falls he is wearing a watch of flowers
Held by a thread
He is wearing a necklace of bitter oranges
He is often piercing things
He is testing their persistence with a pocket knife
Now he is the needle piercing the wind
This kind of intervention is an act of:
Choosing
Desecration
Exploration
Connection
Metamorphosis
This never ends
It doesn’t open what hasn’t got any inside

As he falls he is taking with him
The burning in his hand
In the middle of the palm
By a black insect
The pain is a visitor from the future
It crossed the unwritten map of the hand
It read it meticulously
Now he is crying standing
With his hand open
Showing it to the wilderness
His whole being is subjected to a thing that
In the absence of a more accurate term
We can call: touch.

And as he falls he is taking with him
The eyes of the animals.
And the invisible horses
Every day they ride them and love them
They embrace and caress them
For what they are:
Two cold stones covered with moss.
There he will try for the first time the vertigo of matter
That the abyss is not the black void but the impenetrable.

And as he finally falls the tips of his toes
Will touch the water
And then he will sink at once
Without having time to grasp the boundary
And with his eyes shut
He will see with every pore of his body
He will be uninvited in a strange world
Perfectly fascinated
He will be frightened
He will want to stay there forever
He will want to make it last
He will surface into the light beaten
He will try again
And he will relive this unexpectedly again
He will be beaten
He will try again
And he will bite the web of the sentence:
“It’s never enough”
And he will dance.

from “The book of soil”
Translated by Vassilis Manoussakis, Edward Smallfield

TAINARON*

Here the days are not dissolved in air
They fall into the water
Forming their own layer
A surface of division
A hawk is flying over the body of summer
Diving again and again
He feeds and gets drunk on falling
There is nothing here
Except crazy wind and stones
And sea
A random promise
Sharpening our lust with the moon's blade.

When I arrived for the first time
In the landscape of ending
The wind entered my mouth in such a frenzy
As if I were its only receptacle
Until all my words disappeared.

Every tree accepts the wind in a different way
Some suffer, others resist
(I met a palm tree that gave birth to the wind
And spread it in every direction)
Others are shaking all over and changing colors
I of course am not a tree
I sat down
And wore the wind like a coat
I bent my head and looked at the ground.
Through its cracks the roots of the thyme
With their hieroglyphs were struggling to enter the light
Then the words came back.

Translated by Edward Smallfield and Katerina Iliopoulou
from “The book of soil”

*cape Tainaron, is the southernmost tip of continental Greece. Ancient Greeks believed it to be the end of the worldld

WAKING UP

Every day Mister T. wakes up inside a different person.
That is why he gets up very early.
Before dawn
He climbs the steps of the moments and he goes into the bathroom.
There he begins to peel away the scales of night.
The frozen streets, the bays and piers, the thick foliage and the loops of branches/ the indecipherable texts, the bloodthirsty virgins, the flocks of birds.

Once he is completely naked
He lays his eyes on the mirror
The way someone hangs his coat on a hook.
But instead of eyes he has two fishes.
Being a man of immense patience,
He lets the fisheyes swim freely in the mirror

In those moments he experiences the purest dream.
The dream of being no one
The most irredeemable solitude.
The pitch black crossword of the abyss.

An event that endows his features
With the quality we refer to as “depth”.
Shortly thereafter, the eyes return to their place.
Between them and the mirror a certain relationship has now evolved.
Thus, they may recognize one another.

From Mister T., Melani ed. 2007 Translated by Konstantine Matsuka

MISTER T. BY THE SEA

He picks up a pebble from the shore
Notices the pebble has the remarkable property
Of not having an inside and an outside
The two coincide.
As he cannot think of anything else,
He decides the pebble is an enemy to the world and throws it away.
The pebble’s fall creates the effect known as “ a hole in the water”
Mister T. feels immense attraction and an inexplicable envy towards the pebble.

So, he picks up another and puts it in his mouth.
At first it is salty.
It is a sea- thing.
Shortly after that, it is nothing.
A hard lump of silence in his mouth that absorbs his voice.

Nevertheless, to his surprise he realizes
That even without a voice, he can still speak.
Evidently his invocations are granted.
A flock of sea- birds lands by his feet.
When they fly away they leave behind an illegible text.
Mister T. bends down and begins to study it at once.

From Mister T. , Melani ed. 2007 translated by Konstantine Matsukas

THE GAP

Inside the house, in the front room there is a gap.
Actually it is a thin crack on the floor almost invisible.
Nothing to worry about. Except for the fact that the crack is not inert.
Often enough a draft of air is exuded smelling of dust and rust.
And of something else unidentifiable. Also that it has a voice.
Mostly it is mute. But every so often it produces a sound.
Sometimes he runs there, kneels and sniffs like a dog.
After, he steps away slowly infected by this chthonic, illicit vein.
He wears his coat then and opens the door.
More dangerous, pungent and sharp like a knife blade he walks.
A reaper of glances.
He tunes the song of the streets.
He sucks in the marrow of the evening.
From its hollow bone he makes a flute and quickly shoves it in his pocket like a killer.
His fingers stroke the holes.
But he doesn’t dare play.
It is not yet time to exhale.

From Mister T. , Melani ed. 2007 translated by Konstantine Matsukas

THE SIREN

The sheets are white pages.
Each night he writes, tirelessly.
Feverishly filling them
as they say poets do.

But in the morning the sheets are wild animals.
They are waves, a savage ocean undulating.
And from its depths a little siren often rises.

She softly looks at him and then
she takes out her eyes and offers them to him.
Two green glass marbles.
Mister T. doesn’t dare reach out.
But how he longs for their coolness and how his fingers
sway like sea-weeds
To touch them.

Her eyes would suck up all the dust
which is the hourglass of time.
They would turn blood into water
and lime walls into crystal.

Her offer is pending
but Mister T. keeps postponing it.
Who can bear to live in a transparent house?

From Mister T. , Melani ed. 2007 translated by Konstantine Matsukas

DESK I: Waiting station

Currier of the elbows’ weight
The horror of the white paper

The woodworm, the metronome of silence
Digs its blind invisible labyrinths into matter
Mister T. lights up a cigarette
Lifts his head up and listens:

What the woodworm said:

Silence is not a disease in need of a cure
It's only water’s weaving deep in the sea
A cancelled journey and its longing

Silence is no sheet that covers the world
But bifurcating hunger which beats you all

Who will the branches cut to break the spell?
Who will spread silver on the glass to make a mirror?

From Mister T., Melani ed. 2007 translated by Konstantine Matsukas

DESK II: Departure station

He has been in this wilderness before.
A bunch of children and some stray dogs are playing
They know nothing of the moon’s white metals
They have no wounded knees
They don’t know night or day
All they know is endless play

In this world he is but a paper shadow
Someone who sings before the full moon
Someone who drags his chains through snow

Every time before he makes his way back
He writes down his name on a small piece of paper
And buries it in the ground
Who knows what he is expecting then from this strange seed.

From Mister t. , Melani ed. 2007translated by Konstantine Matsukas

THE LEMON TREE

There is a lemon tree living in my yard
Which, in reality, is a wild tiger.
So I water it only from a distance.
She, nevertheless, manages to inflict her bites.
Often I wake up to find fresh cuts
And sometimes when I take a walk she grabs at my neck from behind.
Despite all that, I still love her
What other tree could digest silence so drastically in order to bear fruit?

Lemon
-----------------
Waxen totem of death
Self-luminous lust.

From Mister T. , Melani ed. 2007translated by Konstantine Matsukas

LOVE POEM

I dreamt of a woman
My woman is not Ash Wednesday
Nor is she Good Friday
Nor the Sunday of Doubting Thomas
My woman is always Thursday.

That is to say inconceivable.

Her neck is a racetrack
Furrowed by hooves
A vibrating field.

She holds a small watch
Between her teeth
And when we kiss I worry
I might swallow it

Then she will always know my rhythm.

My woman is not a tree
She is a stone
When I crunch her my teeth shatter.
She suffers too because it’s impossible for me
To change her shape

I can only change her space
So I throw her away
And then I run like a dog sucking in the distance
To get her back.

From the book of poems “Mister T.”, Melani 2007, translated by Konstantine Matsukas

SONG OF VILSAY

(to Sylvia)

At times as I sit peacefully in silence,
A tiny hole opens
Through which the room comes in gradually,
Until it is fully developed.

The room contains me.
I slowly pace the black and white floor.
I sit at the desk
And wait motionless.
.
The air thins
The room is empty but not static
Its function is unknown

It is empty it is ravished
It is empty I pity it

The depths of my eyes reverberate
To currents
As when you swallow a spoonful of honey.

And I fill up like an inkhorn
(It is horrible to be full of something you do not understand)

As the ink level rises
I am overwhelmed by a sense of the most unbearable lack
Which grows and grows
Which becomes my center.

Around which I evolve vertiginously
Like a vortex evolves around its missing core.

I starve and I spin
Spinning I ascend
Shining like all things in suspension
.
The room is now fully operant.

from the book of poems “Asylum” , Melani, 2008, translated by Konstantine Matsukas