Ballad

Abstract

Ballad MICHALIS GANAS (Translated by Avi Sharon) Days come where I forget my name. Rain-soaked nights come cotton fogs the flour becomes grain then cornstalk peak July with countless scythes whispers in the middle of winter. I see the fabric of the world unravel the hand that untwines it invisible and I shudder if the thread were cut. Thread of water warp without memory transparent drop on moss and lichen snow-down on the mountains leaf-lashing hail and suddenly a warm dive suit in the ark of the womb. Archaic night melts and groans the flame that licks it immaculate. Congregations of waters downpours ancestors glaciers still in the hoarfrost of anonymity. arion 29.1 spring/summer 2021 64 ballad Days come where I forget my name. Mineral nights arrive loose-combed memory founders and reappears volcanic and black with grass-blades from the meadow acorns shells a dim and distant light—drizzle of nostalgia. And I leave for other eras. Laden with bodies. Years arrive snows that scald me blood that gallops and a full-moon glance from the opposite shore. A villager tall honest—one of the sorrowful— with a woman halo of thorns on his head and love untold in his breast. And I prophesy the past words never before spoken and I say Michalis Ganas 65 Every time I saw you you were farther away. And more foreign. Wife of my brother already pregnant with Andreas and me just fourteen. You held a cracked jar that night in the cellar shining a candle for me. What a difficult transfusion as if it were blood and not wine and we with our four hands eyes that avoid each other and if they cheat regret it fixed upon the coursing flow the thread of drunkenness that bound us like a birth-cord changing the bread and wine of our bodies in holy communion. 66 ballad Was I listening or speaking? Fertile sorrow inside me ripened to a starry blur bounteous as a summer harvest and deeper still the black grass which requires two for pasture was undulating raw sodden and bitter before it reached our eyes and hurled us into the white dark. Michalis Ganas 67 I gaze into a well. It stares back. We stare at each other for a long time like contrary siblings. One-eyed darkness lures me on and I descend stone by stone a vertiginous painting. Sotiri. It’s your fingers that hold me it’s my own body at risk I slip and you call out to me: “Constantine.” My curly hair is falling out and my yellow moustache like a sick child I whisper my evening prayer 68 ballad A mother I did seek to find at her side daggers nine and her only daughter. I find her among the basil leaves amid five horrific dreams and in the wayside cloveroot. If a downpour now would only break to startle Konstantis awake and send him homeward sopping. Let him have dry clothes to wear and quietly reproach him there . . . Michalis Ganas 69 Mother—it’s not the mountains. It’s their shadow that steps on me. Nor is it the cypresses. It’s the slithering grass. Crashing down upon me. It’s a golden bee from the world above. She finds me in the flowers and turns me into wax—not honey. That I may be her venom. I will burn in a country chapel melting the meager darkness before the oily fingers of the sacristan can blot me out. In this way mother they choke the flame without blowing lest the souls catch fire and set all the underworld ablaze. Profound dawn. He bends down to gather water and enters the tomb again through the cypress tree. Bee-swarm of birds. 70 ballad Night of the Cimmerians. Abrupt descent and I follow blindly the black ram. No branch or root to grab onto my bones creaking. The air carries here and there the scent of dry laurel and a scarf like a bat’s wing startles me. This is no place for children—what am I looking for with my short pants and shaved head calling out for...