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Poems related to nature by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke
The breast fall
The loft of the body
under which the pale pastures of the flesh
shone even more seducing
in the dark
when with half closed eyes
it was as if you could hear the conduit of blood
emptying and filling up again;
the divine balcony
which only with too much pain
would wrinkle and hide
behind the shutters
the upper storey of everdayness
where another wind was blowing
and the food of life
tasted somewhat like a symbol;
the patio with its own entry
its independent relation with the soul
the illustration of another life
always ahead of the day
always more daring in front of fate
the statue of hope
with its two eloquent curves
fell down
collapsed
and now I see life
bottom up
I see that I always have
the same breast distance
with infinity.
The self totally destroyed by fire
...and instead of despair
when facing your ruined skin
when drowning in the deluge of „his“ memory
the arid field of your future
- while out of habit you keep utteringthe word <tomorrow> -
instead of the inner end of the world
the egocentric hope
that your life may have a meaning
you feel an unexpected, deep pain
looking at pictures of nature destroyed
nature that deep in your thought
was your only consoltation
since you were going to live for ever
under the roots of nature's children
and under the soil you would feel leaves rolling
birds alighting a minute on its surface.
Yet the terror of dark disaster
that envelops the forests
the horror as you hear forecasts
the oracles of the useless sages saying
that maybe on this slope
the tree tops
will never again tickle the sky,
is strangely mixed at the root of your heart
with a delight
because you finally escaped the prison of your ego
which often with insipid details
cancels whatever percentage of compassion
you have been given.
And then for one single moment
you are not hooked
to the bars of your insignificance;
you compare it to the eternal essence
of growth
and your surrender to it body and soul.
The Single Minded Nature
Nature, with romantic monoty
plans the spring of our life
copying its own adolescent dreams.
Flowers, flowers slightly different
in colour and flourishing moments
flowers that with their movements signify
the noble origin of a garden
or the wildness of vegetation.
Winds travel
hair blows about
breasts open to the sun
and immediately the traces of kisses dry out.
Spring, so close to the beginning
to greenery, to bees;
the voice of the universe is always youthful.
Yet how monotonous, how boring
this endless light of life
that you will never see cut off
and the more it repeats itself
the more grateful you are
*
While the sunset
offers so much variety!
Every soul imagines it differently
and it will be different when it comes
in a different moment, dressed in a different way
emitting some kind of mystery perhaps.
Purple clouds deceive you
and when they succumb
to their black self
you think that it was all your imagination
that you had poetically conceived
another utopia.
In essen it is the end the one
that never experience the monotony
of existence
the repetition of the self.
In the Sky of Nothing with next to nothing
From the key hole I peep at life
syping on it hoping to understand
how come she always wins
while all of us lose.
How all values are born
and impose themselves
on what perishes first: the body.
I die in my mind without a trace of illness
I live and I don't need any encouragement
I keep breathing even if I am in a short-long distance
from whatever when toiuched goes up in flames.
I wonder what other combinations
will life inveant between the trauma of final extinction
and the miracle of daily immortality:
I owe my wisdom to fear;
petals, sighs, nuances, I throw away,
I keep only earth, air and roots.
Let the needless go, I say,
so I can enter the sky of nothing with next to nothing.
Extrovert Nature
Nature is extrovert by nature;
whatever it prepares it is always
to show to the sun.
Nature is open
- only living creates see closed horizons -
because every path leads to a clearing
every open sea to a port
and all those stars, had you endless nights
you could count them all
had you not sunk into your own darkness
you wouldn't have lost count.
Nature incessantly tells you
how it is to live with water
with leaves, with the antennae of intuition
with the innocent that take their revenge
the damned you suffer
nature reveals for you her boilding entrails
her craters overflowing with longevity.
Nature never stops showing you
the other side of evil
dark beings that suddenly throw light
to visible ones;
nature really confesses
as night falls: „Another day gone
and I failed again to abolish life's wear“.
Nature never hides anything enviously;
the winds disclose
all the secrets of its heart
All except the one it will never reveal:
the secret of its existence.
Perhaps nature itself doesn't know it.
The Branch
We grew up together
me and the branch
but it kept shooting up and blocking the view
like an obese body
it kept hiding from me the open sea, the mountain
and I would lose the feeling I adored like a god:
a tickling when facing the infinity
of the future of the others.
The branch that cut me off
the unsetting light
was cut, fell down
and I suddenly stood
in front of the view of the eternal life
that will always be far from me
The flower teaches us
Everything the body is loses its meaning
while the blossom of a tree always mean something;
it keeps opening and falling on the ground
without expecting any personal rewards
without considering what deficient immortality
the fruit is...
Look, how familiar with the precipice
everything that blossoms is!
How is it a flower refuses
to carry out its destination?
How is that while cut off from human destiny
always crowns it at the end?
Why the memory of the eyes
I have adored doesn't console me
as impetuous I keep descending
and only the thousand petalled giggles of nature
lift me up?
I see, I say to myself, there are secrets
that you find out only when you lose...
What I want to learn by heart
is the invisible sides of the visible
what I want to see is the landscape
as a center of the world
and not any more as a divine covering for „him“.
I want to be completely taken by the forest
with its everygreen torches
and have the night
advance in me
infinite skies deep
without any diminutive...
Light emerging from the verdant cracks
of the leaves
as from the lovers' iris once upon a time.
Ah! when will the beauty of the falling leaves
capture me completely
when shall I realize that the whole of nature
is love?
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