Yannis Markopoulos

Words of gold on the kerchief * Ι found them when I was out walking day before yesterday
Tomorrow and yesterday were teaching you *
the alphabet out on the clover
But I was passing through the ultimate gate
tied up in time’s yarns

The nightingales gave you no rest in Troy
where you bled dry a whole generation for nothing
It would have been better if your name had been Maria
and you had been a seamstress in Kokkinia
and not living with this company
not knowing the murderer’s star *.

Many came back scarred
by the savage payment of time.
In between, on the way, four winds
took them for a walk for a while
and they found the light that does not tremble
and the sadness that has no cause.

And like the others, these too were lost,
they were found half-way, barking like dogs,
and from the old sufferings, nothing is left
but a dog thirsting in the night.
Women at the corner, by light of the acetylene,
are talking, not making sense, on the shore of the sea.

And on the open seas of the world there are the trucks
they will be unloaded in Kaisariani.
What happened to this century
that turned life over on its back like a turtle
How did fate and the years do it
you heard not one poet.

Who looses the worlds tangle?
Who is the captain in the mountains?
Who gives love and joy
and goes for a walk among the myrtles of Hades?
Words of gold in fields of grass,
who will find them for the next generation?

They bound me to the straights * and the canons
and at the dawn of one bad day,
archers, phalanxes and legions
took me and put me in a cage,
and in the dungeons, with the centuries as dice,
the money-lenders are playing their games.

I was looking for the great hunting,
and yet I was no mangas, no tough guy.
I passed by your own tribunals.
When you find me in Hades
you may judge me again, before witnesses,
and punish me like a criminal.

Ζητούσα τα μεγάλα τα κυνήγια
κι όπως δεν ήμουν μάγκας και νταής
περνούσα τα δικά σου δικαστήρια
αφού στον Άδη μέσα θα με βρεις
να με δικάσεις πάλι με μαρτύρια
και σαν κακούργο να με τιμωρείς

Our place is closed,
all mountains that have for a roof
the low sky, day and night

We do not have rivers, we do not have
wells, we do not have fountains.
Only some cisterns,
also empty.
That echo and we venerate them.

A standing sound, hollow,
the same as our loneliness,
the same as our love,
the same as our bodies.

It seems to us strange
that once we managed to build the houses,
our huts and sheepfolds.

And our marriages, the fresh
wreaths and the fingers,
become riddles
unexplained for our soul.
How were they born,
how did they become strong, our children?

We do not have rivers, we do not have
wells, we do not have fountains.
Only some cisterns,
also empty
That echo and we venerate them.

Our place is closed.
It is closed by the two black
Sympligades (troubles).

At the harbors on Sundays when
we go down to breathe,
we see illuminated in the
sunset broken wood,
from travels that never ended,
bodies that do not know anymore
how to love.

Στα λιμάνια την Κυριακή σαν
κατεβούμε ν’ ανασάνουμε,
βλέπουμε να φωτίζουνται στο
ηλιόγερμα σπασμένα ξύλα,
από ταξίδια που δεν τέλειωσαν
σώματα που δεν ξέρουν πια
πώς ν’ αγαπήσουν.

The words and the years, the lost years
and the sorrows that were covered by smoke
the foreign lands found they had become like brothers
And the sudden joys that came for me
were black lightning in a forest
and the reflections I was able to have about you

And I speak to you in courtyards and on balconies
and in lost gardens of God
and I keep imagining that the swallows are coming
with the lost words and the years
there where first you were everywhere
and now in the cold and in the snows

Fate and time had set the boundary
in this world that I would cast the fishing-line
and the night a thousand years returning
At the end of the celebration to sing
he who had not known a beard
and to knock on the door of sorrow
and to knock on the door of sorrow
and to knock on the door of sorrow

It was not a stopped clock
in a ruined and empty house
the roads which took me and I await
The words which I don’t know I bind
with the people who saw the wrong
and had it embroidered on their names

He who sows tears and pain
threshes the ocean at dawn
black birds show him the way
And he has the drawing near his shoulder,
a sign, secret and radical
that he has gone away from the… world

Fate and time…

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Η μοίρα κι ο καιρός…

At the Cafe “Greece” the fairground acrobat
sells the numbers cheap
a drachma for the acrobatics
the chains for free
the leap of death two drachmas
without ropes, come in, people!

The head without a body, come in, people
they found in Africa
It smokes, it drinks, it hurts
it is crazy about music
it dances with its eyes for two drachmas
who wants to see it? Come in, people!

At the Cafe “Greece” the actors
with acetylene and candles
play Golfo* for the children
with kilted skirts** on loan
and a tear paid two eggs
and three drachmas, come in, people!

(translation: Eva Johanos)
[*Golfo: traditional romantic character from popular Greek drama;
**kilted skirts- foustanelles: Greek national costume]

Στο καφενείον “Η ΕΛΛΑΣ” οι θεατρίνοι
μ’ ασετυλίνη και κεριά
την Γκόλφω παίζουν στα παιδιά
με φουστανέλες δανεικές
και δάκρυ πληρωμένο δυο αυγά
και τρεις δραχμές, περάστε κόσμε.

I don’t know the night anymore, the frightful anonymity of death;
in my innermost soul there hangs a fleet of stars.
Evening star, guardian, shine beside, in the heavenly
breeze of an island which dreams of me
so I may announce the dawn from its high rocks
with my two eyes in an embrace they sail you with the star
of my right heart: I don’t know the night anymore.

I don’t know anymore the names of a world which rejects me.
Clearly I read the potsherds, the leaves, the stars.
My enmity is needless on the roads of the sky
unless it is my dream which looks at me again
with tears to cross the sea of immortality
Evening star, beneath the curve of your gold fire,
the night which is only night I don’t know anymore.

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Δεν ξέρω πια τα ονόματα ενός κόσμου που μ’ αρνιέται.
Καθαρά διαβάζω τα όστρακα τα φύλλα τ’ άστρα.
Η έχτρα μου είναι περιττή στους δρόμους τ’ ουρανού
εξόν κι αν είναι τ’ όνειρο που με ξανακοιτάζει
με δάκρυα να διαβαίνω της αθανασίας τη θάλασσα
Έσπερε κάτω απ’ την καμπύλη της χρυσής φωτιάς σου,
τη νύχτα που είναι μόνο νύχτα δεν την ξέρω πια.

The day that I came and found you
down in Perama with the old men
cursing the sea
and the room which gave birth to you, and Xerxes

I stood next to you and I told you
the tiles will become cement
the wood will become stones
love will become money

The day that I came and found you
down in Perama with the old men
I stood next to you and I told you
they will forget about us on Thursday
on Saturday, on Saturday
at the same hour we will rise again.

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Τη μέρα που ήρθα και σε βρήκα
κάτω στο Πέραμα με τους γέρους
στάθηκα δίπλα σου και σου είπα
θα μας ξεχάσουνε την Πέμπτη
το Σάββατο, το Σάββατο
την ίδια ώρα θ’ αναστηθούμε.