Danae Sioziu (Greece)

Por: Danae Sioziu
Traductor: Panagiotis Kechagias

The Spider 

Dear Sir,

I watch you from the ceiling,
your coffee requests more sugar.
Something about the clothes and the shoes is off,
you shouldn’t have patched up all the holes.
Grab the day like a knife,
the weight of your life keeps growing,
the agreement with the mirror has been cancelled
and you are turning fat.
Tomorrow I will hang before your nose,
perhaps you could please feed me?

Sincerely,
The Spider

Dear Spider,

just yesterday the bat gave birth in a corner of the attic, her tasty eggs float in the air.
I haven’t learned to drive, to debone fish, to read newspapers.
I have two useless dog teeth and a BB gun.
I have made a deal with the morning coffee,
I respect the decision of the mirror.
I no longer set traps for birds,
each day I head to the river and shoot the waters.

Yours,
K.

The Glacier 

Dear Sir,

you walked a lot
inside the curve of my absence
you touched the old snow and the ice
you know, many mistake me for a river
because of my old age
there was a time I covered everything here
and nothing was breathing
sometimes I look at the animals
as they run and hunt
sometimes they quench their thirst nearby
I look at the mountains and I wonder
if I shaped them
I wonder in how many thousands of years
a piece will fall off
we won’t exist then, you and I,
and no language will describe us.

Best regards,
the glacier

Dear glacier,

the world is changing
sometimes I feel that there is nothing left
there this huge emptiness
sometimes something draws things near
like the water the animals
or a current carries it away
and I am moving in the opposite direction
I would like to lay here, near you
and watch the night sky changing
I would like to put my ear on the ground
and listen to your dying song as the ice melts
I would like to stay with you
but the world invites me to move forward
through ice and fire.

Yours,
K.

 
The Horses (Catherine And Marcus) 

Dear Sir,

that day you opened your eyes so widely
as if the world appeared to you for the very first time
empty and endless,
you looked at yourself, vulnerable and lonely,
then you gazed at us while we were drinking water and your eyes filled with tears
as we were swishing our tails driving the flies away.

You named us.

Where the horses real?

Best regards,
Catherine and Marcus

Dear Catherine and Marcus,

when I was a child, as I was approaching the village’s fountain,
close to the springs and the cistern
I felt relief, but I felt nothing in my soul.

Then I saw you.

The tears welled up in my eyes and fell on the earth and the stones.
A voice inside my head told me not to be late.
I named you, I cried, until the ice in my soul broke.

Yours,
K.

Greek Dream 

I remember you driving in the mountains
on steep roads bending into hairpin turns
I am slightly dizzy
your voice fills the car
like old spring snow
there is a town next to a lake, clear as a
mirror
where you return to find
everything you left behind
because it wasn‘t enough.

I know exactly what wasn’t enough
what was left out, what you used to hold
on to
if I look back, my gaze slides
to the end of the route that ripples like a
ribbon
and then I see you on the balcony.

You are silent like the future.

I pass by the blond children,
the wife, the little country house,
the Greek dream
for which you gave your lives.

I walk decisively towards you
my feet bleed as if I were walking on snow
I cover your eyes with my hands and hug you:
Ι am ready to become all this old spring snow.

It’s very simple: we don’t know how to love each other.

You are silent.

I know that if you could you would return
to your childhood village,
long before the Greek dream.
I know it, because I look at you
through the eye of the talisman,
through the eye of an animal,
you keep silent like a secret
folding into itself.

You shouldn’t have left anything behind
You should have just kept the secret.

Even now you can go up to the little
house.
The animal inside you like the eye of the
talisman
can guide you.

If you get there, you will be alone
if you get there, stay there.

It’s not too late and this isn’t anymore
the dream for which you gave your life
it is a dream you carry up the mountain
where once again you become no one.

Returning, you are back in your village
where you prayed to become someone.

Returning, I am back at the car
where I prayed I was your son.

Now your voice doesn’t fill the car
like old spring snow.

We are silent like the future.

Translated by Danae Sioziu and Eera Mac

Danae Sioziou grew up partly in Germany, partly in Greece. In addition to writing poetry, she also translates poems and stories from German and English. She has a keen interest in mythology and imagination, but she also writes about very real topics, such as oppression, gender roles in Greece and the pain that language can cause. She has published two collections that have not gone unnoticed in her homeland. In her debut Useful Children's Games, she shapes poems using the rules of children's games. She received the Yannis Varveris Prize for Young Writers for it. In her second book - Probable landscapes - she tries to use poems to draw the inner map of people, wondering what you would find if you opened people up and what such a landscape would look like. Siozious work has been translated into more than 20 languages and published in World Literature Today, among others. At the Purple Medusas Festival, founded by Sioziou, she also gives other writers a stage. The festival focuses explicitly on literature and gender. Danae Sioziou is the first Greek poet at Poetry International since 2003 and is part of the European poetry network Versopolis. (Took from Poetry International web)