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
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
