The presence...

The Presence

BY ODYSSEUS ALEPOUDELIS ELYTIS

MARIA NEFELE:

   I walk in thorns in the dark  

   of what’s to happen and what has

   with my only weapon my only defense

   my nails purple like cyclamens.

ANTIPHONIST:       

   I saw her everywhere. Holding a glass and staring in space. Lying down

   listening to records. Walking the streets in wide trousers and an old

   gabardine. In front of children’s-store windows. Sadder then. And in

   discotheques, more nervous, eating her nails. She smokes innumerable

   cigarettes. She is pale and beautiful. But if you talk to her she doesn’t hear

   at all. As if something is happening – she alone hears it and is frightened.

   She holds your hand tight, tears, but is not there. I never touched her and I

   never took from her anything.

MN:

   He understood nothing. He kept asking all the time “Remember?” What’s to

   remember? My dreams alone I remember because I see them at night. Days

   I feel bad – how to say: unprepared. I found myself so suddenly, in life –

   where I’d hardly expected. I’d say “Bah, I’ll get used to it.” And everything

   around me ran. Things and people ran, ran – until I set myself to run like

   crazy. But, it seems, I overdid. Because – I don’t know – something strange

   happened in the end. First I’d see the corpse and then the murder. First

   came the blood and then the blow and cry. And now, when I hear rain I don’t

   know what’s waiting...

A:

   “Why don’t they bury people standing up like archbishops?” – that’s what

   she’d say to me. And once, I remember, summer on the island, all of us

   coming from a party, dawn, we jumped over the bars of the museum’s

   garden. She danced on the stones and she saw nothing.

MN:

   I saw his eyes.  I saw some old olive groves.

A:

   I saw a column on a grave. A girl in relief on the stone. She seemed sad

   and held a small bird in her cupped hand.

MN:

   He was looking at me, I know, he was looking at me. We both were looking

   at the same stone. We looked at each other through the stone.

A:

   She was calm and in her palm she held a small bird.

MN:

   She was sitting and she was dead.

A:

   She was sitting and in her palm she held a small bird.

   You’ll never hold a bird like that – you aren’t able.

MN:

   Oh if they let me, if they let me.

A:

   If who let you?

MN:

   The one who lets nothing.

A:

   He, he who lets nothing

   is cut by his shadow and walks away.

MN:

   His words are white and unspeakable

   his eyes deep and without sleep...

A:

   But the whole upper part of the stone was taken. And with it her name.

MN:

   ARIMNA – as if I could still see the letters carved inside the light...

   ARIMNA EFE EL...

A:

   Gone. The whole top gone. There were no letters at all.

MN:

   ARIMNA EFE EL – there, on the EL the stone had cut and broken. I remember

   it well.

A:

   She must have seen it in a dream since she remembers.

MN:

   In my dreams, yes. In a large sleep that will come sometimes all light and

   heat and small stony steps. The children will walk in the streets arm in arm   

   like in some old Italian movies. Song everywhere and enormous women in

   small balconies watering their flowers.

A:

   A large blue balloon will take us high then, here and there, the wind will beat

   us. The silver domes will stand out first, then the belfries. The streets will

   appear narrower and straighter than we imagined. The terraces with the

   white television antennas. And all around the hills, and the kites – so close

   we’ll just shave past them. Until one moment we’ll see the whole sea. On it

   the souls will be leaving small white steams.

MN:

   I have lifted my hand against the mountains, the dark and the demonic of

   this world. I’ve asked love “Why?” and rolled her on the floor. War and war

   and not one rag to hide deep in our things and forget. Who listens? Who

   listened? Judges, priests, police, which is your country? One body is left me

   and I give it. On it those who know cultivate the holy, as the gardeners in

   Holland, tulips. And in it drown who never learned of sea or swimming... Flux

   of the sea and you stars’ distant influx – stand by me!

A:

   I have lifted my hand against the

   unexorcised demons of the world

   and from the place of illness I have exited

   to the sun and to the light self-exiled!

MN:

   And from too many storms I’ve exited

   self among humans exiled!