September 2020

6th September

We’ve lost your rhythm,
September, but keep flying,
blind in changing skies,

like migrating birds,
on their way to their winters:
Reading the north wind,

praying to the south,
the elders in the front line,
youngsters right behind.

May we find our way.

————

9th September

The blackbirds have stopped
singing and nights are falling
silent and lonely.

Our lines disappear
on paper, on low horizons,
on faces and palms.

We‘re home but still gone,
unmapped landscapes of habit,
frightened but eager

to find new landmarks.

————-

12th September

Dusk without blackbirds.
Their fatigue after the long
summer saddens us,

leaves our nights naked.
There’s still warmth and green, but not
their sound of promise.

Oh how we ignored
this summer had no future,
stone on stone our wish,

ignorance our sin.

————

19th September

Unnoticed the leaves
keep falling softly in light
they no more reflect.

Like someone dying
of thirst in the sea, they faint
and go down, down, down.

Sometimes the wind saves
one on the top of a bush,
or a plastic bin,

they are not picky.

————-

23rd September

Last day of summer,
so they say and there are signs:
the clouds gathering

like vultures around
a dying deer; crazy wasps
invade our kitchens,

for a last sweet drink;
people sitting in gardens
even as the rain

starts falling. Who cares?

————

25th September

Leaves fly like letters
unwilling to reach addressees
with depressing news.

The world is too loud,
sinking boats, burning mountains,
where sunsets were due.

But as the pen slides
on the paper, old habits
of promise appear.

Friend, hang on in there.

——————

29th September

The sparrows gathered,
in groups and started flying
from the hibiscus

to the lilac bush,
maybe empathic for those
who must now migrate.

They flattered their wings
with great passion, competed
for the best places,

a shrill goodbye choir.

—————-

30th September

Will life as we knew
it ever come back? Will we
learn to remember?

I sat with my friend
on a bench, her son, my son
have birthdays to come.

The evening was mild,
she and I had been children
in a mighty world,

one not looking back.

————-

Light and Birches

The winter has been mild in its biggest part, except for the last weeks of February when temperatures far below zero put a layer of ice on and around everything. These days were quite sunny but the wind was mostly far too cold to allow long walks at favourite spots for photography and inspiration. So the first day temperatures climbed above zero, I took my camera and drove to a nearby moor and peat-bog area, one of my favourite northern European landscapes. Everything was frozen, everything was a photograph before me taking it.

As my eyes moved from the silver-white of the birches to the brown, sometimes almost black, of the peat-bog, I couldn’t but think again of Heaney’s Bog Poems which deal with the darker side of those northern European bogs. In the Iron Age they had been the wet graves of an unknown number of human victims, some of them probably offerings to the fertility goddess and others victims of tribal punishment. The head of a girl, found in a peat-bog thousands of years later, reminds Heaney of a “strange fruit”, surely not just for its shape, but also because of the other well-known poem and song that moans similar lynchings timely much closer to our times and, hopefully, consciousness. Strange is also for Heaney that civilised people like the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus feel a “gradual ease” when confronted often enough “with the likes of this”, brutal murders this head is now evidence of.

STRANGE FRUIT
Here is the girl’s head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence.

This moor I wander about is not the Teufelsmoor (Devils Moor), but not very far away from it, and so besides the effect of awe such a place has had on humans, I also think of the influence of those landscapes on art and the impact they have had on many artists. Worpswede, a small settlement near the Teufelsmoor, was the most famous artists’ colony in the end of the 19th and birth of the 20th century:  Fritz Mackensen, Hans am Ende, Otto Modersohn who was married to the painter Paula Becker and writers and poets , most famous among them Rainer Maria Rilke who was married to, Paula’s best friend, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, lived there for shorter or longer periods of their lives.

A great friendship developed between the two women artists of the colony, Paula and Clara, a friendship partly depicted in a German film I watched last year, named after one of them, “Paula”. While taking a walk in these boggy grounds I can’t but remember the film scenes where the two young girls walked in the same landscape, among the shiny white of the birches and the golden of the moor grass, enjoying their freedom to be there, the freedom to make art, to make love, to make own choices – a freedom not at all common among women of their times and not at all to be taken for granted even for women of our times.

But even there, in Worpswede, among artists who had also chosen that place in order to live a free life dedicated to art, these two women would have to put their artistic ambitions behind those of their husbands. Adrienne Rich writes about that in her poem “Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff”:

Rainer, of course, knows more than Otto knows,
he believes in women. But he feeds on us,
like all of them. His whole life, his art
is protected by women. Which of us could say that?
Which of us, Clara, hasn’t had to take that leap
out beyond our being women
to save our work? or is it to save ourselves?
Marriage is lonelier than solitude.

(And it is the second time this week I think in anger of a most excellent poet like Rilke. For the first one read Teju Cole’s, On the Blackness of the Panther.)

*********

Corpses underneath our feet,

how strange the solace

among those birches and light.

John Berger

(5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017)

Why I Rhyme

Dear poet, I’ll miss you!

Once I fell into your well

and that saved my life.

 

I do not post much of the poetry I so much love and read here. Maybe I should do that more. I mostly use this space to post my own little poetic bits and pieces. It’s my online notebook and at the same time my published little pamphlet. I write slowly and I doubt much whether I have the right to rhyme at all. You see, in the Mount Olympus of language (especially this foreign one I’ve chosen here) I’m a mortal who sneaks in to steal the fire. The fire I’ve found in the poetry of so many. One of them, a very dear to me, died last Friday, and that was Seamus Heaney. 

 

There’s nothing I can say about his greatness that it’s not said already these days by people who had read him more, or had known him personally, or at least had been at one of his readings, in the same room with that lovely voice of his. None of these things has happened to me but I feel his loss, nevertheless, in a private way. There’s a Heaney poem that belongs to me as much as to the poet himself, for “poets place their voices inside our heads, so close to our thoughts that it feels as though we’ve thought them up”. 

 

‘Personal Helicon’ was read to me by my dearest friend in a moment of great weakness. His voice will also be in my head, as long as I live. I’m as thankful to him for making this poem dear to me as I am to Seamus Heaney for ever being so bold and choosing the ‘squat pen’ to dig in our hearts and minds and let his mark there for ever.

 

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

(Seamus Heaney reading ‘Personal Helicon’ here.)

“The rest I’ll speak of to the ones below in Hades” — C.P. Cavafy (translated by Seamus Heaney)

‘Yes,’ said the proconsul, replacing the scroll,
‘indeed the line is true. And beautiful.
Sophocles at his most philosophical. 
We’ll talk about a whole lot more down there
and be happy to be seen for what we are.
Here we’re like sentries, watching anxiously,
guarding every locked-up hurt and secret,
but all we cover up here, day and night, 
down there we’ll let out, frankly and completely.’
 
‘That is,’ said the sophist, with a slow half-smile,
‘if down there they ever talk about such things,
if they can be bothered with the like at all.’ 

Translated by Seamus Heaney

(Seamus Heaney, District and Circle, Faber and Faber, 2006)

One’s Ithaka

Today, the 29th of April, marks the 150th anniversary of Constantine Cavafy’s birth. Daniel Mendelsohn, one of Cavafy’s best translators in English, has been celebrating this special occasion  during the entire month of April by tweeting a Cavafy poem every day. Visit his Twitter feed to enjoy the poems, or visit the official C.P.Cavafy website to read almost all of Cavafy’s poems in Greek along with their English translations. You can also learn more there about the life and work of this important Alexandrine Greek poet.

I talk about all of this here not only because Cavafy is one of my favourite poets but because he’s certainly for me the most personal one, the one most linked to my own biography. He’s the fist “proper” poet I ever got to hear and remember. Yes, not ‘to read’ but ‘to hear’. I was in the elementary school and although my mum may have been reciting and singing nursery rhymes to me before then, I honestly don’t remember her doing so. I only remember myself contentedly taking a place next to her in her bed, her opening (with a movement of solemnity) the leather-bound copy of Cavafy’s Selected Poems, and her reciting in her warm voice Ithaka, Walls, or Myris: Alexandria, A.D. 340. I was enchanted by my mother, enchanted by the power a poem had on my mother, enchanted by the possibility a poem gave us to share all these emotions with each other. Later, the same power of poetry would bring me together with many important people in my life.

Mum read the most profound verses twice sometimes: “Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey“, Do you hear that, M.? “And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you“,  “without her you’d not have set upon the road.“, Do you  understand what the poet wants to tell us, M.? I would nod ‘yes’, but sometimes also an extra ‘no’, just for the joy of hearing her interpretations again.

Mum would read repeatedly the same poems for a certain period of time; night after night she would go through her repertoire, changing it only when she felt that we both had got the essence of it deep into our souls. Yes, mum has been a melancholic person and so am I, although we both can be very silly and laugh at jokes that I’d be ashamed to admit here, but still, well, reading Cavafy to a seven-year-old…

Never mind her reasons though, I will always be utterly thankful to her for introducing me to poetry and my reading is dedicated to her.

Ιθάκη

Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη, να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος, γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι, τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρεις, αν μέν’ η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει. Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας, τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις, αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου, αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου.Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος. Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωιά να είναι που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους· να σταματήσεις σ’ εμπορεία Φοινικικά, και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν’ αποκτήσεις, σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ’ έβενους, και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής, όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά· σε πόλεις Aιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας, να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ’ τους σπουδασμένους.Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη. Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν’ ο προορισμός σου. Aλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξείδι διόλου. Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει· και γέρος πια ν’ αράξεις στο νησί, πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στον δρόμο, μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη. Η Ιθάκη σ’ έδωσε τ’ ωραίο ταξείδι. Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο. Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια. Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε. Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα, ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν. (Από τα Ποιήματα 1897-1933, Ίκαρος 1984) Ithaka  (Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn) As you set out on the way to Ithaca hope that the road is a long one, filled with adventures, filled with understanding. The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes, Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them, you’ll never come across them on your way as long as your mind stays aloft, and a choice emotion touches your spirit and your body. The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes, savage Poseidon; you’ll not encounter them unless you carry them within your soul, unless your soul sets them up before you. Hope that the road is a long one. Many may the summer mornings be when—with what pleasure, with what joy— you first put in to harbors new to your eyes; may you stop at Phoenician trading posts and there acquire fine goods: mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony, and heady perfumes of every kind: as many heady perfumes as you can. To many Egyptian cities may you go so you may learn, and go on learning, from their sages. Always keep Ithaca in your mind; to reach her is your destiny. But do not rush your journey in the least. Better that it last for many years; that you drop anchor at the island an old man, rich with all you’ve gotten on the way, not expecting Ithaca to make you rich. Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey; without her you’d not have set upon the road. But she has nothing left to give you any more. And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you. As wise as you’ll have become, with so much experience, you’ll have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.

Facing Μirrors

The most democratic moment

is that of mutual orgasm

Titos Patrikios (Facing Mirrors)

Night Falls (Tweets, September 2012)

An example of how poetic meditations work on Twitter. Sometimes the poetic monologue turns into a dialogue. The poet George Szirtes played along with my “Night Falls” tweets. I also often can’t resist responding to his wonderfully surrealistic – sometimes funny, sometimes melancholic – Doctor and the Crab tweet series. His poems, his tweets are always a great source of inspiration.

Night falls. A sentence. A verse. The morning comes but night falls.It falls like a cover, it falls like a sinner, it falls like dark water.

— Magda Kapa (@MagdaKapa) September 5, 2012

Night falls and doesn't pretend to be brave. Nor to see. Nor to know. Night opens the arms and falls. It's free falling in the dark.

— Magda Kapa (@MagdaKapa) September 5, 2012

@george_szirtes Night falls off one's shoulders, an ending of a long day. A happy one, a sad one, it doesn't matter. One we were here.

— Magda Kapa (@MagdaKapa) September 9, 2012

@george_szirtes Night falls off the hair of little children. Curls itself next to the water glass, follows mum to the kitchen.

— Magda Kapa (@MagdaKapa) September 9, 2012

Night falls with the help of our heavy thoughts.

— Magda Kapa (@MagdaKapa) September 23, 2012

An August Full Moons

A year ends with the last day of summer. A year ends with the last full moon of a summer. Today, August 31, is the last day of summer and there’s a full moon, too.  So the year ends. At least for me. These are my rules.

Like all years, this one has added a good portion of time to my life’s account: a portion of love, a portion of sorrow, a little bit of Sehnsucht, and a good portion of surprise and discovery. I don’t want to revisit all of it, but since this August was potent enough to produce two full moons, I’ll return to the other night, to the other full moon at the beginning of the month. I was lying on a beach chair at the Corinthian Gulf, looking at this moon. The night was overwhelming.

My mind has no country, but my body does. Every body has a country. It’s the place where the body feels most healthy, most vivid, most lovable. I was at that place: a hot summer night next to the Mediterranean sea. When the body is happy, when the body thinks, it thinks of sex. The moon has been there on other beautiful nights: My first real kiss was on a night like that, there has been good loving on nights like that, and even tears of longing after being apart. This full moon air in which my body swam in, consisted of light, sea, and all the sighs and moans we had left behind at that beach, all the salty skins, all the hot kisses, all the long embraces.

Cavafy invites the body to remember. He knows too well how little we allow it to think for itself as we grow older. How busy we keep it. How many rules we set. How many clothes we buy. How many sighs we hide. How many tears we deny.

Give it leisure, give it summer, give it night. Give it dance, give it music, give it touch. Give it full moon love.

Twice this August.

(Ella sings of a moon in June, but moon is moon.)

Sachtouris and I, every 19th of July

I

heir of birds

must

though with broken wings

take flight

—

Miltos Sachtouris (1919-2005)

from The Inspector, translated by Karen Emmerich in the collection ‘Poems (1945-1971) by Miltos Sachtouris‘, Brooklyn : Archipelago Books, 2006. (nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Prize in Poetry)