POEM 3

Bitterness Will Mean I Didn’t I Lie  (Pikria Tha Pei Den Eipa Psemata)

– after Kavvadias bitterness, with threads of Eros, exile, kai Alithia

This poem is meant to feel like a confession, a surreal catalogue of truths and betrayals, in the spirit of Kavvadias: but modern, personal, and Greenglish.

1.

I serve Thessaloniki’s smog,

kai tous omixlismenous stathmous

pou skarfalosame mia nyxta me vregmenes kaltses.

2.

The red lantern of a silent street in Dongguan,

where an a girl sewed dragons on my kardia.

3.

To plio pou den efyge pote,

with threads that couldn’t hold a button,

and a map folded in the wrong century.

4.

The almond-eyed girl who said “ni hao”

but gia emena meant

“xechase ta panta kai love me.”

Only to understand argotera that it was a mirage.

5.

The coffee shared with a stranger

who taught me how to say “hope” with his words

and “endurance” with his hands.

6.

A pair of silk pyjamas I never wore

because I was too busy dreaming in polyester shifts

out in the lantern fotinous dromous.

7.

The smile of the taxi driver in Ningbo

who whistled skopous apo tin Cixi

while the world burned

in his cheap Chinese cigarette.

8.

The tragoudi mou pou mourmouriza

<<and I was walking in to the night horis na gnorizo kanenan>>

that went out three times

and the wind was wet-not my eyes

and knew something I couldn’t confess.

9.

The mother I lost

and my boy who said “She’s still here,”

touching my head and then my kardia.

10.

A broken needle

that made a mistake into fashion

and that mistake paid my rent.

11.

A little girl in Laxey

who looked at me like a prophet

and said with her silence:

<<Den eise akoma ekei. Search within!>>

12.

The ache in my trembling heria

when I pressed send on a message I shouldn’t.

13.

The absence of my children in the hallway,

and their voices folded in my chest.

14.

The kiss I never gave my mother

on her cold prosopo

because I loved her

too much to make her real.

15.

The echo of a woman’s footsteps

in a corridor that never led to my door.

16.

To telos-the end,

panta to telos,

that comes disguised as a mandarin

in the dreams of the past.

17.

Kai pikria tha pei den eipa psemata to me.

But each number was a logos,

each memory a pathos,

and I still carry them

in a secret pocket

in my pseche.

Translation Notes:

Kardia – heart

Psixi – soul

Kefali – head

Stithos – chest

Psemata – lies

Plio – ship

Xeria – hands

Telos – end

Pathos – suffering / emotion

Logos – word / reason / truth