Thanos Mikroutsikos / Θάνος Μικρούτσικος

In a canoe you set off and wander
During the hours when the rain becomes strong
To the land of the Visigoths you travel
Where hanging gardens win your heart
Yet you fret and rub your wings together

Salt covers your naked torso
I brought you sweet water from Delphi
you said your life will be torn asunder
and before I can deny you three times
rust takes over paradise’s key

A caravan gallops in the desert
and follows your wayward trail
how can the mind be soothed by linens
how can the Mediterranean be held by rope
love–we called you Antigone

What nocturne stole your light
and in what galaxy will I find you now
this is Attiki — a gray quarry
and I a cheap firing range
where foreign soldiers, cursing, train

Ποια νυχτωδία το φως σου έχει πάρει
και σε ποιο γαλαξία να σε βρω
εδώ είναι Αττική φαιό νταμάρι
κι εγώ ένα πεδίο βολής φτηνό
που ασκούνται βρίζοντας ξένοι φαντάροι

My lips dry and thirsty
search on the asphalt for water
the wheeled vehicles pass by me
and you tell me that a rain shower awaits us
and you drag me to a wet cabaret

We walk along together on the same road
but our cells are separate
we turn to a magic state
I no longer want to know what we ask for
it’s enough for you to grant me two kisses

You play me in roulette and you lose me
in a nightmare tale
my voice is now the voice of an insect
my life is now a climbing plant
you cut me and you throw me to the void

How the need becomes history
how history becomes silence
what are you looking at me for Roza, all numb
forgive me for not understanding
what the computers and the numbers say

My love from coal and brimstone
how time has changed you
the wheeled vehicles pass over us
and I in the fog and in the rain shower
I sleep at your side hungry

How the need becomes history
how history becomes silence
what are you looking at me for Roza, all numb
forgive me for not understanding
what the computers and the numbers say

Keep returning again and again and carry me away
beloved sensation
Keep returning and carry me away.
When the memory of the body rises
and old desire runs through the blood again
When the lips and the skin recollect
And the hands feel as if they touch again

keep returning again and again and carry me into the night
When the lips and the skin recollect

Επέστρεφε συχνά και παίρνε με τη νύχτα,
Όταν τα χείλη και το δέρμα ενθυμούνται

I came a long way to get here
I don’t know anymore where I belong
How much earth I will measure before I go out on the water
In what places I will return again
What new people I will find

They divide life into daily workloads
They take miracles with prescriptions
Caresses are the hands’ sobbing
And kisses sorrows’ breaths

So many instances of waste, so many of wrath
How many nests destroyed
Born for other great fires
I do not return where they have wronged me
I do not return where you want me to

They divide life into daily workloads
They take miracles with prescriptions
Caresses are the hands’ sobbing
And kisses sorrows’ breaths

Above the sun and beyond the light
Somewhere farther even than time
Another wind which resembles an oracle
calls out to me to finish with them
It does not count again, time

They divide life into daily workloads
They take miracles with prescriptions
Caresses are the hands’ sobbing
And kisses sorrows’ breaths

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Μοιράζουν τη ζωή σε μεροκάματα
Παίρνουν τα θαύματα με συνταγές
Τα χάδια είναι των χεριών τα κλάματα
Και τα φιλιά της λύπης οι αναπνοές

I always have on me, tightly on my belt
an old african steel knife
like those which the arabs use to play with
which I bought from an old merchant in Algiers

I remember, as if it were now, the old junkman
who looked like a Goya’s old oil-painting
standing next to long swords and torn uniforms
telling me with a hoarse voice the following words

“This knife you want to buy
is surrounded by strange stories
and everybody knows that all those who ever had it
killed some person known to him

Don Basilio killed, with it, Dona Julia,
his beautiful wife, because she cheated on him
Conte Antonio one night, his poor brother
with this knife secretly murdered

An arab his little mistress, because of jealousy
and some Italian sailor a Greek boatswain-
From hand to hand- it finally ended up on my hands…
I have seen many things but this terrifies me

Lean and look at it, it has an anchor and a blazon
it’s light, feel it, it doesn’t even weigh a quarter
but I would advise you to buy something else.”
“How much is it?” – “Only seven francs, since you want it, take it…”

A small dagger I have, tightly on my belt
which capriciousness made me obtain it
and since I hate no one in the world to kill
I am afraid that I might someday turn it against myself

Ένα στιλέτο έχω μικρό στη ζώνη μου σφιγμένο,
που η ιδιοτροπία μ’ έκαμε και το ‘καμα δικό μου,
κι αφού κανένα δε μισώ στον κόσμο να σκοτώσω,
φοβάμαι μη καμιά φορά το στρέψω στον εαυτό μου…

It was on that night when the Vardaris was blowing
the prow conquering the wave, fathom after fathom.
The engineer has sent you to check the boiler water,
but you are remembering Smaro and Kalamaria.

You have forgotten that tune that the Chileans used to play.
- Holy Nicolas protect us, and Our Lady of the Sea -
The blind girl is guiding you, a child of Modigliani,
the ansom used to love her, and the two guys from Marmara.

Above your bunk a lazy snake is sleeping
and the monkey is turning in circles searching your clothes.
Excepting your mother nobody remembers you
on this frightful journey of disaster.

Under her red lights Thessaloniki is asleep.
Ten years ago girl, drunk, you told me “I love you”
Tomorrow just like then and with no gold on your sleeve
you will be, in vain, looking for the way to the Depot.

I rang you 100 times
to find out if you are alive
the answer was from your voice mail.

I rang you to send you kisses
with the lights switched off
Fortunately I have work
and I’ll be able to forget

And no more relationships, separated, life temptations
and nothing else, anymore
the occasion the body, the line
which they regard with suspicion;
torture myself to find your body
and you are playing at hidden treasure

And around the night, what a night, to fall down
and become morning.
and absence net by net trying to find out
why.
torture my self to find your body
and you are playing the the hidden treasure
and around the night, what a night, to fall down
and become morning.

On a red paper with
with a blue pen
you wrote me how and what
and your number.

And we were talking till late
I don’t leave you, I don’t
and as my heart lost you
it took a zero.

They speak of times of glory, once again
(Anna don’t cry)
We will ask the grocer for some credit

They are speaking, again, of the nation’s honor
(Anna don’t cry)
in the cupboard there is not a crumb of bread

They are speaking of victories the future will bring
(Anna don’t cry)
Me they do not put in their hand

The army is starting out
(Anna don’t cry)
If I return again
I will follow other flags.
The army is starting out

(translation: Eva Johanos)

I, Bertolt Brecht, come from the black forests.
My mother carried me into the cities
As I lay in her body. And the cold of the forests
Will be in me till I die.

In the asphalt city I am at home. Right from the first
Supplied with every last rite:
With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy.
Suspicious and lazy and satisfied in the end.

I’m friendly to people. I put on
A stiff hat like they do.
I say: they’re animals with a quite particular smell
And I say: it doesn’t matter, I am too.

Mornings I sit a few women
In my empty rocking chairs now and again
And I look at them nonchalantly and tell them:
In me you’ve got a guy you can’t rely on.

Evenings I gather men around me
We address each other as: ‘gentlemen’.
They’ve got their feet on my tables
And say: things are getting better. And I don’t ask: when?

Towards morning in the grey dawn the pines piss
And their vermin, the birds, begin screaming.
Around that hour I empty my glass in town and throw
Away the fag butt and anxiously fall asleep.

We sat, a light generation,
In houses that were supposed to be indestructible
(Thus did we build the tall buildings of Manhattan Island
And the thin antennae that entertain the Atlantic).

Of these cities shall remain: what went through them, the wind!
Happy does the house make the eater: he empties it.
We know we are provisionals
And after us shall come: nothing worth mention.

In the earthquakes that are coming I shall hopefully
Not let my Virginia be extinguished by bitterness
I, Bertolt Brecht, stranded in the asphalt cities
From the black forests, inside my mother, in the early days.

Εγώ ο Μπέρτολτ Μπρεχτ
από τα μαύρα δάση,
ξερασμένος στις πολιτείες της ασφάλτου
μέσα στη μάνα μου σε πρώιμη εποχή

And here, this is what I want to tell you now
In India, in the city of Calcutta,
they blocked the road for a human being.
They bound him in chains, there where he was walking.
That is why, then, I don’t permit myself to
raise my head to the starlit universes.
You will say, the stars are far away
and out earth is so, so small.

Well, then, whatever they are, the stars
I stick my tongue out at them.
For me, anyway, the most amazing thing,
the most imposing, most mysterious and biggest thing
is a human being whom they obstruct from walking,
is a human being whom they have bound in chains.

(translation: Eva Johanos)

Ε, το λοιπόν, ό,τι και να είναι τ’ άστρα,
εγώ τη γλώσσα μου τους βγάζω.
Για μένα, το λοιπόν, το πιο εκπληκτικό,
πιο επιβλητικό, πιο μυστηριακό και πιο μεγάλο,
είναι ένας άνθρωπος που τον μποδίζουν να βαδίζει,
είναι ένας άνθρωπος που τον αλυσοδένουνε.