Manolis Rasoulis / Μανώλης Ρασούλης

Best wishes to the Greek who forgets
and in the middle of Chicago lives in freedom
the one who does not know and does not love
- are you sure it isn’t your fault as well, miserable wretch? -
and in Athens too, he lives in exile.

Ach, Greece, I love you
and deeply thank you,
because you taught me and I know
how to go on breathing wherever I happen to be
to die wherever I happen to step,
and not endure you.

Ach, Greece, let me tell you,
before you crow like a cock,
you deny me thirteen times.
You push me around, you bully me,
you kick me like a stray dog,
and you hang yourself above me.

The sweetest home
is the heart
- Odysseas, come back to me! -
whose holy soil
is pain and joy

Each single one is one [alone]
in his boundary of pain
and I am just a someone
who takes you for a walk.

Ach, Greece, I love you
and deeply thank you,
because you taught me and I know
how to go on breathing wherever I happen to be
to die wherever I happen to step,
and not endure you.

Ach, Greece, let me tell you,
before you crow like a cock,
you deny me thirteen times.
You push me around, you bully me,
you kick me like a stray dog,
and you hang yourself above me.

Indescribable, they say is the poverty of Istanbul
Hunger mows down the people
They are drowning in the misery
And the young girls, they say,
In the theory of the cinema and in ruin

The news is bad about my far away city
The city of honorable and hardworking people
And of poor people
About my true Istanbul
The city where you live, my beloved
The city which I carry
On my shoulders
In my sack
From exile to exile
From jail to jail
The city which I have in my heart
Like a knife like your picture
In my eyes

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Άσχημα τα νέα για την μακρινή μου πολιτεία
Την πολιτεία των τίμιων τω εργατικών
Και των πτωχών ανθρώπων
Για την αληθινή μου Ισταμπούλ
Την πολιτεία που μένεις πολυαγαπημένη μου
Την πολιτεία που κουβαλάω
Πάνω στους ώμους μου
Μες στο σακί μου
Από εξορία σε εξορία
Από φυλακή σε φυλακή
Την πολιτεία που’χω στην καρδιά μου
Σαν ένα μαχαίρι σαν την εικόνα σου
Μέσα στα μάτια μου

“Manos Loizos always had the wish to put music to and to produce a record of “Letters to the Beloved” from the poetry of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet in translation by the Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos.However he was prevented from doing so by his death in 1982. A year later, though, his close friend Leftheris Papadopoulos found demos of these songs, sung by Loizos himself, and realized Loizos’ wish; “Letters to the Beloved” was produced and we all loved it. After many years, more recordings of these poems in song came to light:this time interpreted by Manolis Rasoulis under the direction of Loizos, apparently recorded during the beginning of the 1970s. Naturally at that time, because of the junta, it was not the right time for the circulation of these songs, and the project did not go forward.However it is very likely that if Manos had decided finally to produce the record, as intended, it would have been with the voice of Manolis Rasoulis. These demos were found forgotten in the cupboards of the Columbia Record Company and were published by Rasoulis himself on his site.”

Most precious to me in the world
you tell me in your last letter
“My head is about to burst,
the flame of my heart is dying out.
If they hang you, if I lose you I will die.”

You will live, my good heart, you will live.
My memory like a black smoke
will dissipate into the wind.
You will live, my sister
with the red hair of my heart.
The dead do not concern more than a year
the people of the twentieth century.

The death of a dead man going up and down like a seesaw
on the end of a rope.
This death
my heart cannot endure.

But be sure, my most beloved,
that if the black and hairy
arm of some poor gypsy
puts a noose around my neck,
without justification will they look in the blue eyes
of Nazim to find fear.
In the moments of my last morning when it is getting dark
I will see my friends and you.

And I will take nothing with me
beneath the soil
except the bitterness
of a song without end.

My honeybee with a golden heart,
with eyes sweeter than honey,
for what reason did I sit to write
that they seek my death.

The trial just started
they don’t cut off, out of the blue,
just like that the head of a person
as if it were a turnip.

Come, come don’t break down
all of that is a far off possibility.
Come, don’t forget
that the wife of a prisoner
shouldn’t have dark thoughts.

(translation: Eva Johanos)

My whole life is one responsibility
it takes everything from me and gives nothing
my whole life is a furnace
into which I have fallen and it slowly cooks me

My whole life is a bit of foolishness
and my only property
my whole life is a sacrifice
the purpose of which does not even have any meaning

My whole life is a cigarette
which I don’t really enjoy but smoke anyway
and when it becomes a butt, it will be bought for Charon (Death) to consume
when the hour arrives and I run into him

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Η ζωή μου όλη είναι ένα τσιγάρο
που δεν το γουστάρω κι όμως το φουμάρω
κι όταν γίνει γόπα κέρασμα στο χάρο
όταν έρθει η ώρα και τόνε τρακάρω

Many times I deeply wondered
the people all around, if they love me
for what I appear to be or truly
what I am, they live near me.

But however it is I don’t know
who I am, and I suffer
feel for me, save me
and whatever you want I offer to you.

There are moments of silence where I analyzed myself
the vows I made, my sweet, to you
and with my words about myself I convinced myself
now I have no more fears.

But however it is I don’t know…

Many swore that they loved me
because they supposedly understood who I am
and when I believed them they abandoned me,
they just needed me, only that.

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Πολλοί ορκίστηκαν πως μ’ αγαπήσανε
γιατί κατάλαβαν ποιος είμαι τάχα
και σαν τους πίστεψα μ’ εγκαταλείψανε,
ανάγκη μ’ είχανε, αυτό μονάχα.

Εδώ στη γιορτή του πόνου
Ντύνομαι να μην κρυώνω
του Ουλιάνωφ το μειδίαμα
Σαντάλια του Χριστού, φορώ στα πόδια μου
Πραίτορες, βράχοι πάνω μου σωρό
μα ‘γω θα αναστηθώ