Our small Citroen

Fokas Nikos poetry

  '' LOVERS ''

 

Oh miserable patrons of the concert hall,
I watch you as you listen to a piano piece
Ostensibly playing it on the arms of your seat
With fingers twisted, aching and arthritic, 
Aping, poor wretches, the distinguished soloist
On stage or, further back, the famous composer,
Ostensibly playing the tune, beating the rhythm
Conducting it for all the world with head or foot.

Truth to tell, what frustrated composers or soloists we all are;
And indeed what frustrated lovers
– In spite of all the loves we may have known – ;
Frustrated yes, but not resigned, playing as we do
Into our ripe old age on the arms of our seat
Or even on the wood of our last bed, the same old tune
Like an answer to a dream long unfulfilled
And on matter that fails to respond to our fingers.

 

translated by  Nikos Fokas & Don Schofield and John Theocharis

 

                                                                                                           

 

 

 

Frei

 

 

Fokas Nikos poetry

Arizona  (a next part)


(...)
I scanned the unbroken sand around with urgency,
yet failed to find
One single stone to hit the common foe and target
they embodied
Wreak vengeance on that flesh as it profaned for me
the pure infinite field of Nothingness
– By representing something – thus yet again degrading it
to theatre of life.

And ever since, I have been left on ecstasy, (hallucinating
rather
From my prolonged exposure to this desert here), eyes fixed
in dismay on that scene
That loomed larger and larger with time, and was growing
already dreamlike unassailable,
Whereas I stay small in my thwarted aggression,
– without even a stone in my hand.

Translation: Nikos Fokas & Don Schofield and John Theocharis

escaped pieces of colour

Fokas Nikos poetry

SUMMER ’99

With my own free will, each morning I create
The vineyards and the olive groves as though on a black canvas,
– Just like a painter, leaving no gaps. From time to time
A colorful bird (that too my own invention)
Falls heavily on the foliage.
Like a kite out of the stillness.

Other creations, (open sea, sky, mountain slopes,
Visages of this land, parents and friends)
Through my free will they all appear perfectly natural
– While the breeze (yet another invention of mine)
Drifting across the face of the sea
Ruffles in places the seamless serenity.

With my own free will, in this stagnant season for the senses
(Altogether a construct of poetic wilfulness)
Tears flowing I finally create
The fresh face of a girl; the guileless gaze,
The unready lips, the taut arc of the neck, that petulance
Innocent and precocious of the flesh.

And when my will tires itself out, and leaves me,
Like the day-labourer who dog-weary
Returns home to rest till the break of the new dawn,
I too, a day-labourer you might say
Exhausted by this daily toil
Return straight to my grave as to my home.

Translation: Nikos Fokas & Don Schofield and John Theocharis

Olive grove at afternoon in Koroni

Fokas Nikos poetry
Arizona

 A desert-scape; unbroken sand; sand lifeless; skin creeping
up to knees
Chest backsides shoulders; headless though, hence
uncommunicative
Just like the world – a part, part of the whole; sand open to
an undivided sky,
By tree or fowl unshaded, but for a human shadow a frame
wide enough . . .

Suddenly, something I related to before my eyes; two snakes,
entangled figures of eight,
Both creatures after all with heads, and therefore somewhat
more communicative than sand;
Like a mirage of animates they looked in the impassive
oneness of the desert
Dying they too like me against eternity as it were and
incorruption.(...)

Translation: Nikos Fokas & Don Schofield and John Theocharis

Calligraphy of waves

Fokas Nikos poetry
Summer '99

With my own free will, each morning I create
The vineyards and the olive groves as though on a black canvas,
– Just like a painter, leaving no gaps. From time to time
A colorful bird (that too my own invention)
Falls heavily on the foliage.
Like a kite out of the stillness.

Other creations, (open sea, sky, mountain slopes,
Visages of this land, parents and friends)
Through my free will they all appear perfectly natural
– While the breeze (yet another invention of mine)
Drifting across the face of the sea
Ruffles in places the seamless serenity. (...)

Translation: Nikos Fokas & Don Schofield and John Theocharis

Olive grove at the edge of the world

  Fokas Nikos poetry

Ocean

 I avoid the coastline like a shark.
When a bulge
           of land appears
           gaining depth and perspective
           like an embryo gradually forming
The details steadily multiplying until
           as in Creation
Man arrives at last, and human families
           start moving about
           endowed with cinematic quality,
Even before I discern an individual’s
           eyes, nose or mouth,
Though I too an anthropomorphic
I take to the open sea.