Seagull’s fly

Unrelenting traveller

 

Eight salty Beaufort striking my face

at the edge of Inverness.

With my hands wide open

I’m balancing like a seagull

in front of the black and angry Atlantic.

 

I feel your lonely sunset 

as you cross the ocean for hours.

I feel your longing wave

as you come to reach and burst out on the beach.

 

But since I was a child

an unknown star

permanently drives me to chaos,

and it is impossible to resist. 

 

I travel thirsty on clear waters.

I travel hungry in fruitful gardens.

With great eagerness,   

that suffocates inside my breast.

With an insistent deputy,

being stuck as chewing gum under my shoe.

 

This world is so vast.

and this brain, so restricted.

When I will find a beach?

 

Dimitris Varos

Abandon Pallini

 

In this place your truths are bleeding.

Athens is here no more.

She travels down a cart-track,

with a useless spare wheel in the trunk.

 

She named Hyakinthus Apollo

and Apollo Jesus.

She buried the cloud compeller

underneath chapels of Prophet Elias.

And chapels of Prophet Elias

underneath TV antennae.

 

And it is five past ten in the morning.

Eilithyia descends Parnitha,

bearing an arm of death flowers.

 

Smell the wind.

Listen to the birds of Teiresias.

This morning carries a strange message for you.

The dream is a broken glass in your stomach.

How can you live without its glow?

And how can you put it back together again?

You shall bleed in any case.

 

Lean towards the earth.

Wash away your vows at Styx.

And just like Alkyoneas,

abandon Pallini.

 

Dimitris Varos

A gap in History

 

We took leave of the snow.   

We came here

in order to learn to breathe,

to live and to love.

 

Always searching.

The kindness in malice, 

the right in unfairness,

the logic in slaughter.

 

As the Byzantines,

the crusaders,

the Ottomans,

or the tanks with the swastika,

were passing by.

 

Bent in the beach,

next to the pines

that have kneeled from the wind,

we try hard now

to put all those ancient stones

back in their place.

 

But to no avail.

Our memories have dried out

as the watercourse of a stream

in the summertime.

 

They will pass centuries for this soil

in order to forget our passage.

 

Dimitris Varos

I need you

 

Now all the flowers become blue.

 

Salty the kisses I give to the wind.

Illusions those green, beloved eyes.

Every night I find my dreams

have run offshore.

Sometimes in the Indian Ocean

sometimes in a Caribbean sea

or out of port in Dubai.

Lifesavers stay beside them

but they do not copy the signals.

 

I wish I was a dragon in Canton

chrysanthemum in Kyoto.

I wish I was a fellah in Port Said

a meridian in the parallels of your glance.

Every time I need you to take my life away

to finding you

in a handful of fresh water reflecting.

To seeing you

in a misty meadow rising.

 

Dimitris Varos

Against the wind

 

Who threw water on the wick? 

Who, restless and trapped

Can survive in this necropolis?

Trumpeting down the walls

that are not of Jericho.

Trumpeting down the walls

that besiege a chthonic people.

 

Tonight I shall return as a black dove

to bring you an oak tree branch from Dodona

And a darkness full of lightning

all the way from the palace of Atropos.

So that you stay up all night

and knead

a bright sunshine for tomorrow.

 

“Good morning wind-vane”,

to say when morning comes,

“where do the winds blow from today?”

And just like a white horse

to gallop against the wind.

 

Dimitris Varos

The future now!

 

I never been

ocular witness

one of the happiest moments

that I dreamed.

 

I did never taste

the wine of freedom

that I knead in my cellars.

 

And the river goes down onrush,

in order to sweep

this litter life.

 

So here I am

At the bank of Acherons

grin and bear it

as in a bus station.

The system

is doping me with money.

My friends

promise me a sunny day.

And I want

the future now!

 

Dimitris Varos

What’s the difference?

 

If you’re burying the truth in your pockets

or you never search for it

-what’s the difference?

 

If you afraid to fall in the fire

or you don’t see the need to make it

-what’s the difference?

 

If you’re crossing the hands waiting

or insensitive you sleep

-what’s the difference?

 

If you strike the heart on the wall of loneliness

or you strike the heart on stone persons

-what’s the difference?

 

Dimitris Varos