Nikos Kavvadias poetry

(*Nikos Kavvadias was a Greek poet and writer, one of the most popular poets in Greece, who used his travels around the world as a sailor, and life at sea and its adventures, as powerful metaphors for the escape of ordinary people outside the boundaries of reality. Images from exotic places, prostitutes, captains gone mad and memories of the War blend in to form a dreamy world full of lucid forms, part fictitious, part true.)


Woman
________

Dance upon the shark's wing,
Shake your tongue in the wind and go,
In some places they called you Judith, here they call you Maria,
The snake and the eel are tearing each other apart on the rock.

I've been in a hurry since I was a kid but now I am taking my time,
A ship's chimney left me in the world and it's whistling.
Your hand, that once caressed my thinning hair,
it almost broke me down for a moment but now cannot affect me.

The mezzaruola and the four-branched anchor have cracked
Raise the try-sail, young boy, let's set out to the open sea
What son of a bitch has cursed upon us and we have such a bad luck,
so that old men and boys are making fun of me?

Painted. With red light shining on you,
Full of seaweeds and rosebuds, an amphibian Fate,
You were riding a horse with no saddle and bridle,
for the first time in a cave in Altamira.

The seagull jumps to blind the dolphin-
Why are you looking at me? Shall I remind you of where you saw me?
It was on the sand, I had twisted you upside down,
the night when they were founding the pyramids.

We had walked together on the Chinese Wall,
The sailors from Ur were next to you, fixing the slipway,
You were among the bare swords at the Granicus battle,
pouring oil into the deep wounds of the Macedonian.

Painted. With a sick light shining on you,
You are thirsty for gold. Take, search, count.
Here, next to you, I am staying still for years,
until you turn to fate, death and stone.


A dagger
_________

I always carry tightly under my belt
a small african steel dagger
- like those that blacks are used to playing with -
that I bought from an old merchant in Algiers.

I remember, as if it were now, the old shopkeeper,
who looked like an old oil painting by Goya,
standing next to long swords and tattered uniforms,
saying in a hoarse voice the following words :

"This here dagger that you want to buy
legend has surrounded with eery stories,
and everyone knows that those who owned it at some time,
each has murdered one close to him.

Don Basilio murdered Donna Julia with it,
his beautiful wife, because she was unfaithful.
Conte Antonio, one night, his wretched brother
was slyly murdering with this here dagger.

A black his young lover out of jealousy
and some Italian sailor a Greek boatswain.
From hand to hand it passed and into mine.
Many things my eyes have seen, but this one makes me quiver.

Come close and look at it, it has an anchor and a crest,
it's light, why take it, it's not even a quarter,
but I would advise you to buy something else."
- How much? - Seven francs only. As long as you want it, take it.

A small dagger I have tightly in my belt,
that a whim made me make it my own;
and because I hate no one in the world to kill,
I am afraid some day I'll turn it against myself. 


Fata Morgana
_____________

I'll make my communion with seawater,
Distilled from your body drop by drop,
in an ancient copper cup from Algiers,
As done by pirates of old before the fight.

Where are you coming from? From Babylon.
Where are you going? To the eye of the cyclone.
Whom do you love? A Gypsy maid.
What is her name? Fata Morgana.

A leather sail, all smeared with wax,
Of cedar-wood reeking, of incense and varnish,
Like the smell of the hold in an aging ship
Built at that time on Euphrates in Phoenicia.

Where are you coming from? From Babylon.
Where are you going? To the eye of the cyclone.
Whom do you love? A Gypsy maid.
What is her name? Fata Morgana.

Fire-hued rust in the mines of Sina,
The capes of Gerakini and Stratoni
That coating, that old blessed rust gave us birth,
It feeds us, feeds on us, and then it kill us.

Where are you coming from? From Babylon.
Where are you going? To the eye of the cyclone.
Whom do you love? A Gypsy maid.

What is her name? Fata Morgana.

Mal Du Depart
_____________________
 

Always the perfect, unworthy lover
of the endless voyage and azure ocean,
I shall die one evening, like any other,
without having crossed the dim horizon.

For Madras, Singapore, Algeria, Sfax,
the proud ships will still be setting sail,
but I shall bend over a chart-covered desk
and look in the ledger, and make out a bill.

I'll give up talking about long journeys,
My friends will think I've forgotten at last;
my mother will be delighted: she'll say
"A young man's fancy, but now it's passed."

But one night my soul will rise up before me,
and ask, like some grim executioner, "Why?"
This unworthy trembling hand will take arms
and fearlessly strike where the blame must lie.

And I, who longed to be buried one day
in some deep sea of the distant Indies
shall come to a dull and common death;
shall go to a grave like the graves of so many.