Kondos Mercurial Time

8/14/2019 Kondos Mercurial Time

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MERCTJRIALTIME

YANNIS KONDOStrnnslatcd

by Yannis Goumas

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3/23

MERCIJRIAL TIMEAND OTHER POEMS

YANNIS KONDOSTranslated from the Greek byYANNIS GOUMAS

THE SCEPTRE PRESSKnotting . Bedfordshirei-: l. J, .'i;..:j

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First published in 1978by The Sceptre PressKnotting Bedfordshire MK44 IAF EnglandPrinted in Greece byS. Desyllas & N. AlexandrisAll rights reserved

ISBN 0 7068 0409 0

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSMost of these poems were first published in these translationsin Contemporary Literature in Translotion (Canada) and lron.i i'-

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CONTENTSExcavations, 1972The StairwayAgain the RainDanger in TownThe Essence of ThingsMonologueTimelessAscensionThe Night is WhiteIn a SackRain and the PresentFingernailsSketch for a StoryPhotocopySmall Incidents of LifeThe ExcursionAfternoon in AthensThe Rhyming of DeathThe Great SilenceMercurial TimeThe Transistor's LonelinessPanicPer Capita IncomeThe Author

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5/23

EXCAVATIONS, 1972Words rolled from the mouthand faded in the dark.You look at the other side of todayandthe poet's statue nsesstill warm, shaking off the dust.Now it walks down Stadium Streetlaughing aloud.(The archeologists-the grave robbershave taken to their heels, cursing.)


6/23

THE STAIRWAY AGAIN THE RAINAs you walk down a long lt's not raining in here.creaking stairway and the darkness The sky is well nailed down.is humid and clings to your flesh, Behind the upper dotsuddenly I watch you juggling with the balance.you falterand come crashing down. That man passing nowAround you lie oranges, watches and other wears his head for a hat.objects of daily use. The weather is again turning to rain.Lights and voices flare up The sky springs a leak.from various memories. I should have used indelible ink.A siren is heard in the distance. But a dry song will remainBut no one comes. of course. to taunt you.


7/23

THE ESSENCE OF THINGSDANGER IN TOWNDim corridors.Tonight no poems are being written. Built-in doors.You run after someone to talk to.

The madman got away with a gun You splash in water.and is shooting to kill. You bump against tied hands.Everything points to him, but Millions of lights blazeno one SeeS him. over your head.They go out.I run-we run. Then they aim at your neighbourI stumble over myself. and fall on him like crows.A third one tries to weep.The poet feignsa fruit-bearing treeto escape the woodman. Philosophising is all very well-I'm not saying-so are orderly parks, even antiquities,but life here is drawing to a close,as a lake recedes with the advance of drainingworks.And a mute white colourhas begun to cover us, hard as stone.

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8/23

MONOLOGUE, OR MY ARM IN APRILMy arm's extensionis a mum afternoon. You could even say:a stone thrown in the weeds.Metaphysics aside, however,my arm proper isa line vertical to my bodywhich at times becomes an exclamation mark.I can see it now amputatedunder a bridge, fly-infested,having forgotten how to open a door.Its finest momentsstill endure, when it lies asleepon a knee.But all at once it gives a start,jerks up and runs awaybarking threateningly.

TIMELESSThe slain afternoon is beginning to smell.So is the summer.An open wound is the sunand not a word about my love.In my memory there's a blank.A field, so to speak, wherethe oddest of objects are to be found:from empty tincans to dreams.Otherwise I lead an ordinary life.Only at times, fear,that domestic animal,gets underfoot and creaks.

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9/23

ASCENSION Bright, warm light, a very bird,will stick to my armpit.Now I climb onto the ceilingand the day burns my face. Below they awaitI cry red tears. with open mouths.Poems fall out of my pockets.A few burst and darken the nighteven more.Others lie forgotten on the ground.(Doubtless, after many yearsthey'll remember the explosion-their function, that is-and will alter the population density.)Now I climb ontothe ceilinglike a jet of water,like a thirsty eye.Once I'm on it-monochrome butterflies will springfrom my blood-A strong wind sweeps away my bones.Light.

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10/23

THE NIGHT IS WHITE IN A SACKIt Taki' si"oto'to' you'll fit into that grccn poemThe other room is a distant land, whcther you like it or not.It has suns, wods and happy river boats.The other room is a ravine It's warm in thre.in my mind. You'll find gnrss, a sky and some dreaming.I make as if to enter it, and find myself in here, Besides, the poem is of glassHere, without breathing appamtus, lnd you'll be able to see out.hemmcd-in by books and furniture. You must rcalizeThe river bursts the dools why I insist so,and brings in the dead of the Balkan Wars. Unless you want to share my fatc.Wild Slav songs startle my cyes.You, of course, exist and sleep off your other life, -And now that I'm talking to you

almost dead and much loved. I'm nowhere-Airplanes fly across the ceilingthrowing down angels-as well asGuevara in the garden-I rush out, and a sunraybeheads me as if I were a tmitor.

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RAIN AND THE PRESENTFINGERNAILS

It's raining, as in Russian films.These fingernails will surely drive me qazy.The sky is fractured. I cut them and they grow ar once-especially

Down come generals and devils. nowI hear the frozen lights in spring they are insufferable-of cars descending. They say: Long nails-long voyages.To hell with travelling. I want to knowThe smoke of your songs where I am now.doesn't impassion the official.He brings the night and lights it They keep on growing, fill the roomthat he may warm his beard. get caught in doors, bother me when I eatwhen I go to the loo, out on the street.You're frightened. But what is worse, I can't hug you.Whenever I go to touch youIf the rain lasts much longer they entwine and scratch you.the birds will fade out. I stick them in my pocketsand they tear throughthe trousers.You'll tell me: there's enough trouble in theworldwithout fingernails.There they go again, growing like the night.['m thinking of chopping off my hands to find

peace.But doubtless they'll sprout on my back-they'll find an outlet-Iri

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12/23

Buthug what isyou. worse, tr can't SKETCH FOR A STORY(Montage)

Our inner look is a cloud that constantly alters shape.ANDREAS EMBIRICOSa1

The pedigree poodle called Alexander raced downthe stairs and out into the street. The traffic flowedlike a river. Alexander, without a leash, shut his eyesfor a moment (he envisaged a green open space withtrees and he pissing carefree under the sky), then fellunder the wheels. He managed to see the first car runover him. Then nothing. He remained or rather hebecame paste on asphalt. His skin, torn and bloody,became insensible to patting and kicks.

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Hospital of fair angels. My favourite poet, hit byblood in the heart, lies on water wearing only aY-front. At the edge of the bed my younger brotherand I are watching summer. A lady from France istalking to us about surrealism. You are asleep amongrushes near a lake full of soldiers.

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l5The song uncoils into a noose for the condemnedman's neck. And the condemned man may bereprieved at the last moment. But you, singing asong, are certain to die with a fag in your mouth(unaware that it is your last), babbling as you areabout daily trivia, political economy and publiceconomy. You'll drop dead with cigarette aglow,scarf in mid-air, and booze splashed all over yourtrousers. Your voice will threaten no one any more,and your final word will be a stone thrust into theground.

t7The heros of our narrative, beau and belle. metthanks to a cow. To be precise: they happened to livein southern Europe, in the east end of town. andbeau told belle that he loved the way cows look atyou and drool. Also, that they swim across rivers-swim so well, you can mistake them for horses. Itwas love at first sight. And during siesta time theyslept together on a low, narrow, wooden bed, andthe cow dried up their feet, ruminating the silencewith eyes shut.

25Artesian waters the darkness I drink; and wordscome out as little blind dogs. Helpless, cuddlypuppies both black and white. Those that escapefrom being dumped into an empty lot grow in amatter of hours. They become Alsatians that tall.Ravenous and thirsty, they recognize no one. Thuswe wait for summer to pass and for October toarrive. If I can keep alive until then the words"lifeguard," "my two eyes," and "green your hair,"I'll be saved. And I won't have to mutter indesolation with this pack of dogs.

28The landscape shifted to the left, emitting smoke/fire,and began whistling as it went. It's leaving atwhirlwind speed. Others have noticed it withoutsuspecting that you, too, had a hand in realizing thismovement, this music. Basically, you must controlthe geographic position of your home and your life,as a pelican knows of the happiness hidden in thepouch under its lower bill, full of fish. Troublesomeshoes take you elsewhere, you lose sight of thelandscape and your bearing, and you don't knowwhere you are now and tomorrow.

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32In a rapid voice, as though hir ;)L; ^;ffi";;rr",

We all drink milk. Milk is good for the complexion.For the skin, that is. Eyeless swine. Inquisitors andwhores in the dark. You have the monochromesocieties on your side and write history to suityourselves. Thus you eat the satiated dog and thepie. You do not fear a deluge, for you yourselvesconcoct the weather forecast. You foresee norevolution, for you yourselves are revolutionaries.Everything works like clockwork. Everythingsynchronized to blissful time, in this life and thenext. But you tremble and panic when you see myhand poised on the switch that will drown you inlight.

33Again before me rush horses and trains, and peoplerun with them. They trespass on my property, takewhat they want, speak indecipherable words. One ofthem in fact stops and looks at me and makes a briefpolitical speech. Everyone and everything depart foran unknown destination. You think: Might they allgo and leave us alone at last? Then again: What haveI to do with all this? And to think that you'reholding Aladdin's lamp without being able to doanything. You rub it and nothing comes out of it.

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Simply because it's just an ordinary lamp, andshortly the oil will finish, and you'll be in a strangeplace without a foothold.37

I piss on noonday means I don't intend dying withyou. You attempt to conceal the angel from others.You eat the angel. In the morning you go bywhistling, and his wings come out of your mouths. Amurdered pimp is also a pimp in afterlife for abreath of paradise. Everything around is flying; onlymy saddened self can't find a piece of rock, an inchof ground, frorn where to take off. I close my eyes tolight and see the cricket maddening the apricots withiron singing.

38Sterilized hands remove you forcibly from sleep. Inthe same scene a woman is crying, probably for thesame reason. Laic songs dismantle the sky. A childre-enters its scabbard, the womb. Soundless surgerycommences with ultra-violet rays. Now no one iscrying. Everything is level. You watch theboundless plain. A vast stretch to death and beyond.You sleep soundly with short green breaths and hivesof chlorophyll in the armpits.

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15/23

40I can't fit into my body. I want to expand, to getaway. I turn on the tap. Water flows. Night flows. Ibend down to drink, to forget. I knock against mydead face. A voice flares up. Voice of silence. Theflow of memory jerks me back into my body. As I'mwriting, the moon disappears between your legs andthe grass grows wild, red as fire. All else is wrappedin glass wool. Only your hair creaks and grows,ignoring political systems and trigonometry.

42None of the images you see today have credit.They're worthless. But what does today mean?Today is night, and how I manage only I and mycigarette know.Rotten songs.Rotten cans.Rotten ideas.Only the night's fresco knows what the word dangerimplies at all times. Don't think the world is smiling.It merely bares its teeth.

43The eye found a corner to lay its eggs. Summer fullof gnats, earthquakes, revelations. In the corridor afrozen lamp illuminates a profile and a voice: Isanyone at home? Anyone at home? The profile sticksto the wall with gaping mouth. Outside the sunknocks a statue on the head. Voices behind bitterorange trees, cracking of heads on roads. Petrolgushes in public urinals. Money fills our cisterns. Nowater anywhere. The eye found a corner and laid itseggs-images of the future.

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A cigarette goes down easier when you listen tomusic. Sundays are clouds of smoke, and I lose sightof people. There are, of course, islands suitable forneurasthenics, but that's no solution. Nor what yousay: that only the setting of the table and thescribbling pencil should be heard. But what can Iand my cigarette (which forcibly learnt how topronounce silence) do before this perpendiculararrangement? Shouting doesn't achieve anything:you only awake the stool pigeons.

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16/23

45All movements planned. The fondling, the knife, thestrangulation, the frigid look. But mainly the so-called political and intellectual liberties. Planned, likethose silly country scenes with the little white houses,the windmill, the sea, the setting sun, and the farmerwith a donkey laden with fruit. Fruit, then; but thewolves have taken liberties and in summer swoopdown upon houses. The room is full of wolves.There are about forty-five of them-if I can countcorrectly. They stink and growl. Now they are tellingjokes and laughing. I remove the mask of one, andhe is even more wolfish beneath. And they don'twant fruit. but meat.

PHOTOCOPY

To sandpaper my eyestill they catch fire, and have done withour renowned communication and be left alone.Alone in the world without superfluous colours.Alone with my breath.And the black camel days to passwhile I listen only to your veins,blue yarns at your throat.Ideologies in the frigealong with the cheeses and the Russian saladalong with the poems and the power policyand that nonsense about air pollution.No more. Enough is enough.Enough of photocopies of emotions.Enough on the subject of patriotism.Once and for all. I'll remain alone.taking my dolphins to grazebeneath the Acropolis, and as they chewthe burnt cud I'll fall asleep or die withoutdreams.

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17/23

SMALL INCIDENTS OF LIFEThe morning newscast splintersinto stones. Stones, news,then the late night news. More stones.The national anthem. and out.In the interim there is a roadthat you cross always alone or with others.A road-cum-river.Blue river flowing through the roomfrightening you with its roar-your nakedness cuts me like a razor-Narrow bed-distant land.Shots are heard outside-stones fall inside.The razor cuts right to the bone. I freeze.There is some mistake. I am elsewhere.Strange music throws me down.My fingernails make for the woods-dragging me along with them-Water, light, breathing, are cut off.My bones creak and I am alive.(Here I stop, for I see a womancombing her voice. A woman enwalledin my words.)

THE EXCURSIONI am leaving by train for the lake-what lake?-Wheels turn, seasons turn.My mind puffs smoke.About me whistle trees.I leave like a shot. At last I am mobile.I have taken nothing with me.Only cigarettes and a batch of poems for thejourney.-Like saying: my shaving kit-I know the latest historical facts by rote;I'll relate them to the chap beside me, and we'llboth have a chuckle.The woolen scarf is a tight noose around myneck.When the conversation warms up I'll tell themabout you.Afterwards we'll discuss politics, then art.Fine up to here. But there is no other passenger.I am all alone in the compartment with fingerscaught in the window.Everything speeds by. Everything eludes me.I look for the engine driver. He is nowhere to befound.The train is automated. remote-controlled.The lake comes into view.Time ceases.

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The water clasps me like iron.I sink to the bottom of the lake.I look at the water's surface.Strange place for a pic-nic.By right I should have died in anYet I am alive, and think:Did I get on the wrong trainorwas I forced into another era?

accident.

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AFTERNOON IN ATHENSI wipe old voicesoff the telephone.Then I wind up the device-I still muddlethe telephone with the clock-remove my skin and takea hot bath . to relax.I solve political crossword puzzles.Five down.Five hypodermically.Six-letter word.Breath.Someone gags me.But I can see the deceaseddriving his car at breakneck speed.He swerves, uses the horn, anxious to getin time to the graveyard or the restaurant.


19/23

THE RHYMING OF DEATHHer body a hollow reed in my hands.If I were a shepherd I'd use it as a flute.But time is pressing and suchconversions are a luxury. Also. because:trees do not flyallies are fighting each otherrefugees go hungry.Your body, my love, is dead.It lies in the grave: flowers over itrefuse beneath it.I warned you as you rode your bicycle

on the seashore,but you paid no heed to the granitedepths.The bikini turned into dust and dustthe song in your ears. Beyond the grasstime appears in blue, life glimmers and ends,and the coalman comes to shovle the bones.

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THE GREAT SILENCEVarious voices call to me.Coloured, ironlike-your voice yellow-inlayed in the afternoon-Voice crying in the wilderness.Barren light. Barren land.My hand grazes on your belly.The picture shows a demonstrationor prisoners of war-well, peopleabout to perish-in the background,there where everything ends, I seemy wife shouting:"Lower, lower your hand,"or even worse: "Lovely day today."The stayed hand.The stayed poem.Someone turns on the switchand darkness flows thick as plaster.All else is a question of time.


20/23

MERCURIAL TIMESlide I

Coarse caressing of the nape. All doors openat once. A kick, and you spew out allsecrets and your death. Lifeis equivocal. A horse galloping acrossthe sea, flesh flaking offand bones scattering everywhere. Onlythe final motion remains, and the neighing.Slide 2

It's lovely here. Of course, we've losteverything.But our country has invincible frontiers,plentiful seas and enough sky to cast beforeswine.For the time being we rnunch our saltand see evil in the grassand panderism in the waters. Aheadstretches a long rope of a road. Noosearound the neck.I am being dragged into progress to thesound of music.

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Slide 3Have you ever seen a sad woman in a shabbypetticoat eating grapes in winter?Suddenly summer comes, and the aforesaid

womanis a girl lying naked in my arms and smiling'Summer again, and her plaster effigy lies on thebed.

-You do not rememberyou do not seeand you fallfrom the eighth versedown the Poem's shaft-


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THE TRANSISTOR'S LONELINESS The wild transistor plays on, and no one seesthe octopus seizing a seagull on the rocks.I know all about dream nests.I can do without them. I am sick of fairy tales.Sick of aqueducts-Maria-freedom.In me lives a lifer, an anarchist. a saboteur.He goes on hunger st kes, attempts to breakout.In vain. At the last moment he is fedby force intravenously. H is caugithanging on a ropeonly a foot from freedom. And it's back in theclink.On visiting day his friends rcll him: Bereasonable.Do something. Sign a paper.Make an appeal. Timc is against you. yourhealthis beyond recovery. You need a doctor.Your parents have withered. Your wife hasrcmarried.Music enwraps him like smoke.His long hair gets tangled with his ideas-and he can't comb it-Days go by. Events stay still.

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22/23

PANIC, OR LITSA WANTS TO MAKE LOVE PER CAPITA INCOMEWHILE THE RADIOACTIVE CLOUDAPPROACHES fiis year I wore no gloves.I touch everything with bare hands,I open a bottle and the days I have no fear of tetanus.explode like volatile gas. Bare-handed I do my calculations.I view cvcrything through fractured eyesThe sky is nailed to the earth and don't intcnd goirg back,and there's no escaping. My life-your life is projectedon a screen in quick or slow motionI'm telling you for the umpteenth time. with certain streaks of light-erotic voics,I'll take to the woods and that's the end.with a bear. ln a clearingwe'll play tennis with a zero. Economists .appraistne economtc nse.Your desire's quicksand Animals quietly eatwill not suck me under. thcir foddcr-ignorant of figures--

Wate6 runroots spread.I chew stone all dayunshaven-unyielding.

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THE AUTHORYANNIS KONDOS was born in 1943 in Eyion, Peloponnesos,where his parents.had moved during the German occupation toescape the famine raging in Athens. His family resettled inAthens at the end of the war, and he enrolled in a privateschool. His father's occupation as officer in the Greek armytook his family to many parts of Greece. He began writing andpublishing his poems in student magazines at the age ofeighteen. He read economics at the University of Athens. Aftercompleting his military service in 1970, he published his firstbook of poems Peripheral. In the same year he took upemployment in the statistics department of an insurance com-pany. In 197 I he opened, with a friend, a bookshop in thecentre of Athens, which was, until he gave it up last year, ameeting place for avant garde poets, painters, actors and compo-sers. He now works for a large publishing company in Athens.His second volume of verse, The Chronometer, appeared in1972, and roused tremendous interest; but it was his thirdcollection, The Unforeseen (1975), that set him firmly on hisfeet. In 1974 he received a grant from the Ford Foundation. Hislatest collection is entitled Photocopies (1977). In addition tothese English translations his work has been translated intoRussian, Italian, Serbo-Croat, Bulgarian and Welsh.

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