YIANNIS STIGAS

PROPHESY THAT ENJOYS ITS FOAM
 
 
You, there, give me my voice
                                even if I have nothing to eat
because the back and forth of bodies is beautiful
(from singular to plural and back)
 
The bridging of breath is beautiful
(shaky or solid --- it is immaterial ---
doubly beautiful in its immateriality)
 
Flowers are a beautiful riddle
 
But a time will come
with astringent seconds
to ruin vision
and turn it into Siberia
 
this applies to those who travel towards summer
the rest of us will blow it in some other way
 
one day
someone will find a loose stitch of heaven
and pull it
and all the bicycles of the angels will fall
 
                    All of them
                     I mean it
 
 
 
BREATHING EXERCISES
 
 
I turned my soul upside down
and I saw how stones grow
(with a little bit of light)
luck hardens and happens
 
So that birds can rise high
and then
the sun unwinds them
 
Try to breathe normally
in blue --- out blue
in one breath everything happens again.
Stones I was saying ---
everything that comes to you is like a razor
and if you want it even deeper
in blue --- out blue
 
Keep it up
 
This world
is the most compassionate form of never
 
Never was sweating
                                so bloody
 
 

 
SIMPLE MATHS
 
Reaching the fourth kilometer of silence
I dropped the nails I had for God and the sun.
Since then I've been going around with the great
                                            zero under my arm.
 
To start with, it was an ordinary sleeping-bag
--- you know, you get in, which means you start dreaming.
Now it is a huge boarding school
for the psychologically inflammable.
 
Since all this has happened with zero
imagine what might occur with One.

 Translated by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke