TWO POEMS
CORRESPONDENCE
Translation: Vasilis Moschovos
I don’t want to write you on this inelegant
Garamond 12” screen. This is what I am.
So little.
I want to send you those air-mail enve-
lopes
blue-white stripe like a lapel all around.
To brush my tongue on the gum, to
crimp
the paper from the sweetness, a small tattoo upon the lips
that took the permanent shape of your name.
I am unwritten like a blank slate. I fill myself with
words.
How many words to cover
the heartless distance between us?
And when you’ll take in your hands
this antiquated letter,
I will know that your palms will be sealing
my faint fingerprints.
I don't want them to be obvious,
to offer my surrender so easily.
I will then peel myself the few pretexts.
Will I scare you?
My dragons are in the box with my children’s
toys.
One blow and to little
pieces, light blue, red lego.
And that scar on the brow of my left nipple
I lied to you, one little white lie,
is the spending of an antediluvian wound
which does not work anymore from the inside.
Touch the paper, put it in your pocket,
crumble it,
so that I can feel the sweat wetting your palm
place it casually on your hair
which I want to comb now with my fingers
to live of their silks.
In this moment we are still young,
unwrinkled our “I adore you”’s, my beloved,
we burn and become at the same time
fresh in the mayhem.
Keep my letters,
in the black box of your memory.
Keep me, for I am naked and innocent.
Vacations
Translation: Claire Papamichael
Every day I yearn for
the taste of your body.
Every breath of mine looks for a den
in the thicket of your neck.
I offer all my “I love you”’s as offerings
to your fleshy lips.
My dusty desk,
the unborn child’s despair,
the luggage at the emergency exit
dim at the glade of your embrace.
How can I not love you?
It’s the only way
to exist
Anymore.