Dimitris Lyacos, Greece

Por: Dimitris Lyacos
Traductor: Shorsha Sullivan

The First Death

I

Sea of iron. Moon silent as pain in the depth of the mind. A body swept here and there on the rock like seaweed or a lifeless tentacle, fruit of a womb ship-wrecked by the winds, ensanguined and flesh-filled mire. The left arm cut short, the right to the end of the forearm, a rotted stick raving amid the water’s lungs. Of the ravaged mouth there remained only a wound which closed slowly. From the eyes a blurred light. The eyes without lids. The legs down to the ankles — no feet. Spasms.

II

Judgment of the sea,
shackles from broken sobs
beneath the dry bowl’s split eyelids
an unseen prey –
plunder from passions’ tombs, litanies to the senses
on the point of crumbling, inarticulate melodies, lava
from beheaded rivers
blades of the waves cut deeply into the screen;
development of an hour-glass, epidemic
unmixed visions of heroes leaning
into the drunken veins of the light
the tempest that winters on the marshes –
shedding its leaves the return
of a dismembered body in the spring.

III

Dead jaws biting on wintry streams
teeth broken under the victim’s tremor 
that disinterred their roots before it fell down and
worshipped the hook;
mouths gather to suck through the earth
empty heads digging for some drop of flesh
they have begun. Reeled off the net, 
the sky has descended.
Regiments of the dead whispering unceasingly
in a unending graveyard, within you
too you can no longer speak, you are drowning
and the familiar pain touches
outlets in the untrodden body 
now you can no longer walk – 
you crawl, there where the darkness is deeper
more tender, carcass
of a disemboweled beast
you embrace a handful of bed-ridden bones 
and drift into sleep.

ΙV

Keep moving among the remnants of the feasts
like the sheepskin which flutters on the improvised gallows
keep walking amid the fragments of the night
with the Nightmare’s bitter betrayal in your mouth
eyes burning like the sick man’s bed
aware that all men have drowned within you
and just as the umbilical chord stretches
– and you feel the heavenly hand which now
draws you with all its might –
keep wondering without breath
when will you reach the end
a bereft body, a crippled embrace
when will the hangman put you down
a limping soul
an old woman despoiled by the quest
uprooted by weeping
when will you give up the ghost in
the vomit of your misery

(and you ascend into the flowers
of the tree where you were hanged)

V

Peaceful sundown. Despair.
The demons have settled down. The moon is screaming. The pathways memorials of the scourging. Slaughtered dogs swimming in wilted moats. They freeze solid, bones and pleasured scales. Consequence of a face without a mouth. Thirst for resurrection. I am baptized in the trenches of mourning; dry kisses, bitter sponge, the rotted leaf returning to the ground. Turn back inside. I swell with lust, unhallowed I writhe, in the recesses of your body I spill my blood. Unblemished teems the dew in the dawn of your embrace.
Peaceful sunrise. Despair.

Dimitris Lyacos is the author of the Poena Damni trilogy (Z213: EXIT, With The People From The Bridge, The First Death). So far translated into twenty languages, Poena Damni developed as a work in progress over the course of thirty years with subsequent editions and excerpts appearing in journals around the world, as well as in dialogue with a diverse range of sister projects it inspired. Renowned for its genre-defying form and the avant-garde combination of themes from literary tradition with elements from ritual, religion, philosophy and anthropology, the trilogy reexamines grand narratives in the context of some of the enduring motifs of the Western Canon, while, at the same time, being one of the most widely acclaimed postmodern works published in the new millennium.