στάχτες

Story of a Rented House

It was made of ice-cream, at a glance.
No house should be yellow. We knew it
and said nothing.

We were foolish to lie there,
to make love and think the walls
would keep our secrets.

The place made notes and sent
regular reports to his mother
who placed a curse on my foolish head.

The telephone wires took messages
from the snow queen, played the words
back in his dreams so he thought me a traitor.

He sat in the dark as I worked in the evenings
as the windows closed like the eyes of the dead.

I left early one night as
I heard him call my name. I swear.
But he was not there,

he was not outside,
he was not in any room,
he was not making music,

he was not waiting
for me

he was not waiting
he was not ever waiting
ever waiting
ever again.

She can’t renounce the colour of his shirt,
its warp, its weft, the slightest scent of it
how, like a ghost, the movement in his hands
roots out, haunts her history in the dark.

His lips, the gentlest breath now finds her skin
draws a careful map; how transparent loss
can only be observed when certain light
catches it, the ink of night in traces

embroidered by creatures with slow purpose
as though the tiny light of centuries
were threaded microscopically in stone.

Norman tapestries offer up their hands
yet of this holy shirt that held his back
just shade remains, remembrance of pale green.

I go out to shoot everything
ahead of the hunt; foxes, rabbits, otters,
peacocks, doves, parakeets, macaws.

Red’s in everything, the ecstasy of summer gone:
my breasts ache with the memory of milk.
My daughter, blind to winter, turns her back

I smell the anxious dead gathering
to witness her return, hear cold sunshine
whispering like a wound, singing songs, telling tales.

I can, at least, describe this waiting,
testify against the lowest of the low –
that rancid, hollow, stinking thing
who stole her from the day
and calls himself a god.

I will make the mountains cringe,
the rivers boil with human dead,
colour them full of poisons, break out
from their boundaries, invite the busy harbours
to collapse, call the seas into cities,
command volcano dust to choke
the Western hemisphere,
invite ice to claim dominion
where it can.

I walk always, I have no choice
while she’s imprisoned in her crimson bed,
her dungeon in the underworld.

I liquefy the silver of the moon with mercury,
pour it like a jug of cream over the ocean.

I heard you crying in the dark
my beloved child, my girl.
He took away the lanterns,
snuffed out all the stars.

Across the continent, my grief of grief
becomes a dance of death.

*
©Pauline Rowe
photo©Stratos Fountoulis, «Shopping Centre 2013»

*

Pauline Rowe lives in Liverpool and works as Poet-in-Residence at Liverpool Mental Heath Services (Mersey Care NHS Trust). She also works on writing and well-being projects for the charity North End Writers. Her collection Waiting for the Brown Trout God (2009) was published by Headland Publications.
She has an MA in Writing and Reading Poetry and is in the first year studying (part-time) for a PhD at Liverpool University from Oct 2013, researching the uses of poetry in mental health services.
She has worked with a range of organisations including FACT, Liverpool Poetry Cafe, Shrewsbury House, Liverpool Library services, the Greenbank project, Tenantspin, BBC Radio Merseyside and Project 51. Contact: northendwriters@gmail

XANTHE*

A cockroach resting
between the washbowl 
and the mirror, motionless,
there, half-way up
the grey wall.
In the cobbled streets
the same old footsteps,
the feet going pit-a-pat
along the alleyways,
the trot

of a woman passing and gathering
pitter-patter men’s
glances, she gathers them 
pitter-patter and tucks them
into her midi skirt.
They climb up
her thighs,
they turn into a cockroach,
they halt on her hips.
Glances-cum-insects
glances slithering up
to her pliant waist,
her lush bust,
her protruding tits
that break first 
men’s hinting 
tape. Men
beckoning 
everywhere, 
tipping the wink 
men devising 
the same old 
tricks, ploys,
fallacies,
compliments.
The cafés
are full of men
sitting on chairs
in fours.
Men erect
standing 
on the pavement 
in a state of expectation,
leaning over to stamp out
their fag-end.
One is bending down
to do up his shoelaces,
another comes to a sudden stop
and bids you a simple “good morning”,
another turns round as you are passing
and whistles at you,
yet another is standing stunned
at the butcher’s entrance
and is slow getting out of the way
allowing you to pass, mumbling 
a tongue-tied apology.
The baker smiles at you.
The haberdasher tells you:
“You look lovely today,
Madam!”
The greengrocer offers you
a split pomegranate.
Someone else greets you
by ringing 
his bicycle bell,
rhythmic and melodious.
Same streets,
same men,
same distance
for twenty-seven long years,
the glances mercury
on you, and some others
red beads
round your neck.
The trip on your back
in a low-necked blouse 
since October’s 
voluptuous sunny days 
allow it.
The birds are singing,
the cars are speeding by,
the men pause and look around,
your buttocks are swaying
on high-heel boots,
the days are shortening.
In the streets and squares
your yesterday’s admirers
are aging adolescent
in the same cafés.
The province is an inexhaustible
supply of enthusiasm.
Transplanted vision
always leads us 
to the same streets,
and when we lose our way,
a couple of steps further on 
there’s a half-open 
window, jasmine 
in bloom, you arrange
your hair,
a slim-waisted, stylish 
figure
ducking 
at the War Memorial
to avoid the machine gun’s
barrel.
She dabs her lips with lipstick 
on the sly, on the quiet
she sends an SMS
on her mobile phone
under the table.
She ignores a call,
she is either not connected to this line
or has her phone deactivated
for one-third of the time.
She receives flowers from strangers,
red roses,
mouths half-open for a kiss,
red lips, 
greedy lips that know 
how to bite an apple,
to cut a thread
with their teeth, to sew up
silence and smile,
dyed conversations,
kisses on a bench,
a butterfly at rest
on the tip of a leaf,
your face once again
an outlet for pedlars
and beggars in the hum
of the streets.
Your face, 
an embroidery 
on a shop window,
in a shop window.
Behind a café’s 
glass windows dozens
of man’s faces.
Your face on
a glass window, you pause,
you straighten your eyelashes somewhat,
you try a smile,
you start walking again,
you rise, travel,
get lost, arrive,
your face deforms,
your figure is nondescript,
only your eyebrows 
and your eyes will be ours.
Your father’s nose is
that of our fellow-citizens,
the mass of hands
that have yet to touch you,
words have not wounded you,
hugs have not made you dizzy,
lovers’ shapeless profiles,
flat excitements,
inexplicable passions, stickabilities ,
unforeseen love affairs,
offhand flirting, 
rough and ready sex as usual,
unexpected love.
Start walking,
share out your body,
stop and listen
to the country’s music,
sense a musical phrase,
a note announcing
a Hadjidakis** instrumental piece.
Admire your lissome shadow
in men’s looks.
Hear the masculine confessions
from one who weans away
from the crowd and follows you
step by step, keeping a lover’s distance
as far as your house, 
because your house is built
of stone, lips and arms,
an untidy girlish 
bedroom, sheets in a mess.
She undresses 
in the steamy bathroom,
the cockroach having 
traced out its route,
the mirror naked,
my daughter bathes 
after her stroll
to the Xanthe 
Progressive Union. 

©Sotirios Pastakas
The town of Xanthe, vintage photo 1930 

*Xanthe: The capital of the province of Thrace.
**Manos Hadjidakis (1925-1994): Internationally famous Greek composer.

Translated from the Greek by Yannis Goumas