Titos Patríkios

First there was the sea.
I was born among islands.
I too an island have temporarily emerged
until I see a light - that too like a stone -
and sink again.
The mountains came later.
I chose them.
I somehow had to share the weight
that had crushed my country for centuries.
...

He wanted to solve riddles
and illuminate the darkness
where everyone gets comfortable
much as it weighs them down.
He was frightened not by what he saw
but by the refusal of others to accept it.
Would he always be the exception?
He could no longer stand solitude.
So to find his fellow men
he plunged the two pins
deep into his eyes.
Still he distinguished by touch the things
that no one wanted to see.
...

Verses that howl
verses that rise, as if they're bayonets
verses that threaten the established order
and in their few feet
make or break the revolution -
useless, false, boastful
because today no verse topples regimes
no verse mobilizes the masses.
(What masses? now, between us -
who thinks of the masses?
at most a personal deliverance, if not recognition)
That's why I no longer write
in order to offer paper guns
weapons made of babbling, hollow words.
But only to lift up a small corner of the truth
to cast a little light on our counterfeit life.
As much as I can, as long as I endure.
...

Twenty wasted years (but what
would it mean to have gained them?)
Fernando Pessoa



All of us have some wasted years
sometimes three, sometimes seven, sometimes more
but twenty makes a nice circle
we can hark back to the past around it
without the panic that comes
with the wasted years of an entire life.
Besides, what would it mean to have gained
twenty years that shift about
each time I look back?
Steady progress according to plan
constant productivity, increased yield
recognition at the right time and appropriate honours.
Well then, twenty futile, wasted years
that provided opportunities
for dreamed-of lives full of possibilities
that were never realized,
for enjoyment gained from identification
with people who I was never to become,
for delight and guilt at the never-ending
adjustment of goals,
for unreserved acceptances,
for frightened rejections.
Twenty wasted years
are always necessary
for an ambitious present.
...

Words in their thousands pour out of dictionaries
as soon as you open them
like ants, black, red, white,
when you step on an ant-hill.
How can you find, how can you choose
amid the conflation of words
the only one that fits,
how can you escape from the others
that stick to your body in swarms
struggling to survive.
Yet the unspoken words beneath the tongue
the only ones that don't emerge from your mouth
they too gnaw from within
leaving shrivelled corpses
of people who tried to speak
when it was too late.
As long as I'm able
to combine even two words
I exist.
...

This town has crippled me, just as long ago
a town might have crippled me,
with its barracks its empty factories
its black walls topped by broken glass
its narrow streets, treeless, dry
its swarthy, salty women
mobile, fluid, with coal-black eyes
olive skins lightly perspiring
just enough for transient, fleeting love
on shadowy, half-deserted sea-shores
with their stones, tar, rust and thorns.
This town cures me with its nights
the nights of my country that never change.
...

When the oak tree fell
some cut a branch and stuck it in the ground
calling upon people to venerate the same tree,
others mourned in elegies
the lost forest their lost life,
others made collections of dried leaves
showed them at fairs made a living,
others asserted the harmfulness of deciduous trees
but disagreed about the kind of reforestation
or even the need for it,
others, including me, claimed that as long as there are
earth and seeds there's the possibility of an oak.

The problem of water remains open.
...

Whatever I sought was given me
what was given me I squandered
or my creditors took it back.
Now I'm thinking of clothing myself in snow
with the foresight of the sensible mammoth
which after thousands of years
would like to be found intact.
...

Light between the adjustable wooden slats
of half-closed hotel blinds
to the left of the station square
light that fell, cut into strips
dressing us in zebra skin
two zebras struggling in the light and the darkness
with black and white stripes etched diagonally
by the headlights of cars -
a white and black dive into your body.
After so many years I sometimes see again
a zebra's black and white flutings on my skin
when I'm alone in a seaside hotel.
...

Al love is born within love
grows larger in its belly
spreads into its space, inhabits it
desires permanence, lays claim to time
prevails, enjoys its superiority
and as soon as it is satisfied with its gains
another love is born in its belly
grows larger, spreads into its space
threatens to tear it to pieces.
But sometimes lovers stop
feeding on their adversaries' flesh
and exchange stone likenesses
that remain unaltered within the surrounding decay
and coexist without pointless hostilities
more or less amicably, like the busts
of rival leaders in cemeteries.
...

It wasn't easy to preserve my language
amid languages that tried to devour it
but I went on counting in my language
I reduced time to the dimensions of the body with my language
I multiplied pleasure to infinity with my language
with it I brought back to mind a child
with a white scar on his cropped head where a stone had hit it.
I strove not to lose even a word of it
for in this language the dead spoke to me.
...

The same arrogance again:
carving your life on another life
as though wanting to release
your own statue in the belief
that you're freeing the stone.
...