Those Cracks

In the walls we live in,

people had been alive,

young, too.

Then.

Open palms touched the walls

after the fresh paint had dried.

As they were pleased with the result,

they invited friends for dinner.

The weekend after.

Laughters. Wine.

Those cracks grew wider,

to fit time inside.

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Cold

How does the cold spread?

The feet that won’t move

on the frozen road,

the sleep that won’t come

in the empty bed,

the story that won’t end,

until someone’s dead.

The cold is like something

from another century.

Evrotas

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The Evrotas River (Ευρώτας) flows through the Laconia department of Peloponnes. According to the mythology Evrotas was the third King of Laconia, his daughter was Sparta.

The area around the city of Skala and its iron bridge is an agricultural area. There are orange and olive groves that demand a great number of seasonal workers in the autumn and winter months. There is a big number of immigrants in the area and the illegal ones are the cheapest to use and the first to blame.

First published on Instagram

Black Madonna

At the souvenir shop on the island of Kythira I wondered about the faceless icons. It’s because of the island’s holy icon of the Panagia Myrtidiotissa (Holy Mary of the Myrtle Tree), said the shop assistant. According to the legend, back in the 14th century a shepherd who was walking his sheep on the island saw the icon of the Mother Mary near a small myrtle tree. He took the icon home but every night while he was sleeping the icon miraculously made its way back to the small myrtle tree. Finally the shepherd built a small church for the icon next to the myrtle tree. It had been a black Madonna icon from the start but over the centuries time completely wiped out all facial characteristics leaving behind the absolute blackness.
On the day we were leaving the island a flock of sheep crossed the road blocking the traffic for quite a while. A black shepherd appeared out of the bushland and cleared our way.

 

 

Leaving an Island

 

 

Leaving an island is always leaving 

a paradise and a prison at the same time.

And the islands you have to 

leave behind in life are many.

 

Think of the childhood and, for some,

mum’s protecting arms, for others, 

wrongs and pain.

 

Then think of marriages

where you once found heaven 

but then hell.

 

 

Think of school,

how some sailed away on knowledge, 

how helpless others sank under its weight.

 

 

Think of ideas and saints,

expensive dresses or flattering friends 

or alcohol or cigarettes or food.

 

 

But most of all think of love.

All the loves you’ve left behind. 

Those beautiful islands, or the others, 

without water, without shade.

 

Leaving an island is always leaving 

a paradise and a prison at the same time.

Homelands

Behind the curtains of the “Brown Villa”, where the Party offices were from 1932 to 1945, you can now see the museum built to honour the works and life of the Jewish painter born a few streets down the road and sent to death to a land far away by the ones holding speeches from the front balcony.

When the Jewish painter was a kid in the same town, the villa still belonged to the family of the wealthy fabric factory heir. His grandfather had brought from England the first steam engine to be used in a fabric factory around here.

After the war the villa became the headquarters of the British occupation forces, then a Natural Museum, then a Cultural Museum, then an Art Space. The current exhibition’s name is “Homeland”. Homelands are complicated places.

Iftar

Again sometimes I feel wiser.
I feel as if I knew why
these long evenings in June
are so full of Septembers.

And why when we sleep
in someone’s loving arms,
Death will look away
for a couple of hours.

Mondays I am never mad
at other people because
they must go to work too.
That’s how work pays off.

(But I won’t sign that
even if you forced me.)

As my memory declines
I do fear sudden flashbacks:
hands, moons, bottles of milk.
They strike me like lightening.

This afternoon, for instance, I saw
a three-year-old daring a high ladder;
remembered how I had to look away
and not always run to help.