Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

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 uttering

the 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?

^ Top

« Translating into Love Life's End | Translation of poetry by Katerina Anghelaki Rooke (1994) »