and rotting teeth
and press your lips
to the light of my heart
MY REDEEMER
I think of you all the time
But I can’t speak about you any more
I must love you secretly
I must come to you when I am alone
As I am now
And even now I must be careful
I want all the women
You created in your image
That is why I lower my eyes
When I pass them in the street
You can hear my prayer
The one I have no words for
The name that I cannot utter
I’m twisted with love
I’m burning with boredom
I hate my disguise
The mask of longing
But what can I do
Without my disguise
I wouldn’t be created
My Redeemer is a woman
Her picture is lost
We surrendered it
A hundred years ago
“Give us the Lady,” they said.
“It is too dangerous now
“to have her likeness on a wall.”
So I gave her away
And the language with her
The happy language
She invented for her name
And anyone who wants
To talk about her
Has to become like me
Humiliated and silent
Twisted with love
A specialist in boredom
And other childish matters
FIRST OF ALL
First of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again
A family will pass by in the night
speaking of the children’s bedtime
That will be the signal
for you to light a cigarette
Then comes a delicate moment
when the backwoods men
gather around the table
to discuss your way of life
Dismiss them with a glass of
cherry juice
Your way of life has been over
for many years
The moonlit mountains
surround your heart
and the Anointed One
with his bag and stick
can be picked out on a path
He is probably thinking of what
you said
in the schoolyard 100 years ago
This is a dangerous moment
that can plunge you into silence
for a million years
Fortunately the sound of clarinets
from a wandering klezmer
ensemble
drifts into the kitchen
Allow it to distract you
from your cheerless meditation
The refrigerator will go into
second gear
and the cat will climb onto the
windowsill
For no reason at all
you will begin to cry
Then your tears will dry up
and you will ache for a companion
I will be that companion
At first nothing will happen to us
and later on
it will happen to us again
THE CROSS
I am Theodoros
the poet who could not read or write
When I was too old to work
I made religious items
for the tourist shops
I broke down doors
and I put my hands on women
women from America and Paris
They were the ones
who said that I was a poet
I will not tell you about my problems
my son’s fall
or my life at sea
I carved crosses
and like everybody else
I carried one
I astonished women with my desire
I fished for them
with goggles and a spear
and I fed them
with what they had never eaten before
If you are a woman
and you follow the shavings
of this man’s effort
in the moonlight
you will see my muscled ghost
on the sea road to Vlychos
and if you are a man
on the same road
you will hear women’s voices
exactly as I heard them
coming from the water
coming from boats
and from in between the boats
and then surely
you will understand my life
and do a kindness to my soul
by forgiving me
I pray this to the one
who fashioned me out of myself
I confess this
over the wine
to Leonardos
my Hebrew friend
who writes it down
for those to come
– Kamini, Hydra, 1980
TIRED
We’re tired of being white and we’re tired of being black, and we’re not going to be white and we’re not going to be black any longer. We’re going to be voices now, disembodied voices in the blue sky, pleasant harmonies in the cavities of your distress. And we’re going to stay this way until you straighten up, until your suffering makes you calm, and you can believe the word of G-d who has told you so many times, and in so many ways, to love one another, or at least not to torture and murder in the name of some stupid vomit-making human idea that makes G-d turn away from you, and darken the cosmos with inconceivable sorrow. We’re tired of being white and we’re tired of being black, and we’re not going to be white and were not going to be black any longer.
SOMETHING FROM THE EARLY SEVENTIES
By and all, or by and large, as you say, the reading public’s disinterest in the novel of sensibility behooves itself very well. Or to put it differently, I am very different from most of you, and the older I get, the gladder. I should have come from a different country to entertain you with the horrors of my native land, but I didn’t. I came from your very midst, or you could say, your very mist. I am your very mist. But don’t be alarmed; you are not in the presence of a verbal fidget. If I strain too easily to push a pun into a profundity, it is only because I am at the end of my tether. I’ve taken too much acid, or I’ve been too lonely, or I’ve been educated beyond my intelligence, or however you want to explain me away. It’s a pity if someone has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart’s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it. It is really amazing how famous I am to those few who truly comprehend what I am about. I am the Voice of Suffering and I cannot be comforted. Many have tried but apparently, and mercifully, I am immune to their shabby consolations. I will capture your tear without hardly trying, in the vast net of my idle prattle. I am going to tell you such a love story that will make you happy because you are not me, but who knows, you may be sobbing behind your ecstasy, as I have hinted, or even promised. I think it’s a good story. I think it’s tough. I think it’s got fibre. I’ve told it to a lot of people and they all liked it. I’m going to tell it to you. Among
