Navigation
- Home
- Philosophy
- Europe
- International
- Peace efforts
- Artists beyond Images
- Culture
- Conferences
- Newsletter
- Links
- Imprint
War Diary
When the Olympic Games were held in Athens 2004, Hatto Fischer of Poiein kai Prattein went ahead to connect poets to the Olympic Truce. The outcome was a publication Poetry Connection: Poets and the Olympic Truce 2004 on the website of Poiein kai Prattein of five closed themes and five open for further interactions e.g. tram poetry. Katerina Anghelaki Rooke made her contribution to the book called Entries into the War Diary.
13th Day
or Now on land!
The heavenly battles descend on the soil
and death returns to earth:
its place of origin.
High flashes accompany it;
it is the only luxury left to the corpses.
Indeed, how did evil change direction!
From below, its immediate action would start:
from mud, hoofs of animals
boots, swamps and it would rise
up to the black clouds and the innocent souls.
Now the desert,
as I imagine it with countless pink shades
sand breasts
breathing in the desert wind
a secret body
with its dark oases hidden under
impartial spectator of disaster
conquered by parachutes.
From above downwards now
the evolution of bleeding flesh;
heaven a past in flames
will be forgotten
and the good will be thrust in the earth
buried deep, very deep in memory.
14th Day
or the abolition of inner space
I am a speck of sand
taken in by black waters.
The place is flooded and the boundaries
separating the two spaces lost:
the inner one where memories grow
together with weed-fears, grass-hopes
and the outside one choking in the dirty scourge
of the latest news.
When was the boundary destroyed?
Lava, sewers, waste
pour into my inside self unimpeded
- my inner life has been abolished.
I am thinking of getting hold of a little branch of tenderness
to remember your birthday
years ago in a snow-covered landscape.
But your body weighs on me
like all those dead ones
and those eyes of yours
–their color that of a shuddering reptile–
were narrated to me
by inconsolable mothers
painted for me by crying girls
and wounded boys.
How was I so plundered
without ever stepping out of my room
and the private garden
of my sorrow when I saw you leaving
became a collective tomb?
How is it that I,
who was so involved with the skirmishes
between the visible and the invisible
ended up a fanatic viewer
of the most recent broadcasted horror?
15th Day
Or the lesson
ForPedro Mateo
We said we would have our lesson again today
As if nothing…as if nothing…
All of us humans without “power”
“popular mandate”
Or some “sacred duty” calling us.
Language we said
Language the eternal joker!
What does “mascara” mean?
The additional face! Funny, eh?
Words, tiny surprises
With their simple meaning,
Their complex function….
Abruptly we stopped laughing;
We thought that even language
Sounds insane these days…
Night fell, we switched the light on
And saw how dark our glance was.
Reality gives us the most thorough teachings
And this knowledge is first a heavy could
That crushes you
Before becoming a light sheet
That covers you.
16th Day
Or the End of the person
I was going towards sleep
With my head full
Of smoke from the burned earth,
And my heart squeezed
By invisible pincers.
And while every night
I imagine the end of my person
As others pray
I found tonight on my pillow
A gift given to me by war:
The insignificance of my death.
17th Day
Or One more Elegy
All quiet on the front today
The only thing they didn’t tell us was how many
Scorched ones they pushed into the sand.
I wondered if the desert
Rejects alien bodies
As our poor body does…
Night is falling; I am reading letters
From between the Wars: they correspond
And kiss through words
Without knowing if they will ever meet
Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Rilke.
18th Day
Or The new order of things
I dreamed
That I was in the old love nest
But everything was changed:
Walls had collapsed
New rooms had appeared
Whiter than lilies
With nurses all in white
Inviting me in.
“You know, I used to come here years ago…”
I said as if I were apologizing
While with my eyes I licked the corner
Where the mattress used to be.
It looked now like something rubbed out
In a child’s copy book
Or like the snout of a wild-boar
Sunk in the green mould
Covering an ancient stone.
A sweetish smell sprang from the spot
Which did not remind
The old supine one
Of anything anymore
“The new order of things”
I whispered waking up.
19th Day
Of What we know about sleep
“We do not know where
The knowledge of sleep rests”
Said the professor on Television
- between two assaults in the Gulf –
and added that the more minute
the animal is, the less it sleeps.
Look at the bird
That hangs from a high branch;
It knows
That if it falls asleep
Intoxicated by the divine blue
It’ll lean downwards
The branch will break
And who knows in what abysmal
Dead man’s arms it’ll fall
If it deeply sleeps
If it deeply dreams of heaven.
20th Day
Or The little phrase
The sun is like a mirror today
With brown spots appearing on the surface
And the reflection of an uncertain shape
Standing instead of an image.
The life-giving content of vegetation
The expressions of passion
And the beautiful decorations of decay
Everything is tedious this hour
That motionless resembles an animal
When it sniffs its last moment
Even if it doesn’t know
How the divine can smell!
And suddenly in this soup of existence
A little phrase comes up to the surface
From deep down, from the bog of dreams.
Unexpected, forgotten, playful, childish
With its sounds unmolested by time
A little phrase, a gold-fly
Flew in from the open window:
“Coming, ready or not!”
Days Later
or
The moral is always in prose
I re-read the War poems. I observe how the despair of the others
became my own myth. My inner life has just come back and its
suitcases are full of impressions. But why was I in such a hurry to
write down my reactions to all these frightful but so remote events
of the time?
It is because my hidden person has topped telling stories to my
visible one. Like bodiless heads all my stories float in a colourless
substance that is not even memory.
Who went where and fate was spoiled? Who unbuttoned his shirt?
Who locked the door? How is it possible that I cannot narrate all
The visits of death?
I got involved in foreign wars because in my heart the traces of my
last passionate campaign have disappeared.
Katerina Anghelaki Rooke
« Poem 'This' read in Kamilari 1995 | Translating into Love Life's End »