Yiannis Koutras / Γιάννης Κούτρας

Always something remains for you to say
Something that is only for the others
Kiss the feet all the way to the ankles
to be consistent to the lowlife*

Then you will be in the market
a venerable high priest
In the window case a rare vase**
Beside sacred artifacts

You will be recorded forever in the pages
With the imprint of your hands
In the black and white picture, your face
Will be like a landscape in the fire

As many years as you have been sickened
You will give them the blood of your heart
To win titles, your medals,
And for your life’s atonement

There is always something more for you to find
Something each person completes
One person will buy, another will pay
You will implore the difference

You will be pulled along, you will want to save yourself
Your name will only be a joke by then
And you will see your heart on the hooks
And you will beg not to lose your mind

(translation: Eva Johanos
*αλήτες ~ plural form of a word with many derogatory connotations, referring to people who are not to be trusted, commonly translated as vagrant or tramp;
This video of a performance on a popular musical television series features the poet Manos Eleftheriou himself, who can be seen in the audience wearing a dark beret)

All night you made him drink the wine of Midas
and the lighthouse rocked him with its triple flashes of light
Beside us the boatswain with the pirate’s long braid of hair
and over there the dark harbour of Gabes

In the sweet dawn the drowned man kissed you
and when you wake, the bell tolling twice, you will be drowned.
With every caress, one more drop falls, a drop of blood
from the scar of the old wound from China.

The parrot sent you, for the last time, the “Ahoy!”
and the stoker answered, in broken words, from his furnace room,
“Throw into the waves that old knife of yours, it has rusted,
and go onto the foredeck to hang yourself, woman, alone.”

The ship’s screw, leaving, writes behind it: “I betray you”
and the windlass of the helm whistles back shrilly.
Don’t go. Tell me, where, did you drown it, one night in London
or in the oily waters of some other harbour?

The seamen of the deep have woken to beat the drumroll
and come to do your hair for you, forever.
Sharpen those swords of words, the ones I like,
and come back with the seals, into the caves.

Three days the nails kept breaking, three days they kept nailing you fast,
and you, with your hands clenched tight into fists,
for the last time, and in vain, you cast your spells at the typhoon
which drives us onto the last shore, where the wreckers wait.

Dance on the shark’s fin.
Play the wind with your tongue and go.
In some places they called you Judith, in some others Maria.
A snake and a moray eel are tearing each other apart on the rock

I’ve been in a hurry since I was a kid but now I am taking my time.
A concrete mixer left me in the world and it’s whistling.
Your hand, that touched my thinning hair,
it almost broke me for a moment but now it can’t define me.

Painted. With the red moonlight on you.
Full of seaweed and blossom, an amphibian fate.
Riding a horse with no saddle and no bridle,
for the first time, in a cave in Altamira.

The seagull leaps to blind the dolphin.
Why are you looking at me? Shall I remind you of where you saw me?
On the sand, I had blinded you upside down,
that night when they founded the pyramids.

Painted. With a sick light on you.
You are thirsty for gold. Take, search, count.
Here, next to you, I am staying still for years
until you turn to Fate, Death and Stone.

Where are you really this night
that I am so, oh so alone,
and I am playing hide and seek
sometimes with the boredom and sometimes with the pain

Where are you really this night
that the wild wind is blowing on me
(you) to come and with a hot kiss
to fill me up with summer

May you come for a while,
just for one night
to fill up with light
my unbearable darkness
and in your two hands
to hold me tight warmly
May you come for a while,
then you may go shortly after

Where are you really this night
in these streets that love you
their (streets’) familiar duet
our footsteps would sing again

Where are you really this night
that the hope has become a dry leaf
(you) to come close to me and provide a shelter
from the pain’s storm

May you come for a while,
just for one night
to fill up with light
my unbearable darkness
and in your two hands
to hold me tight warmly
May you come for a while,
then you may go shortly after