• Katerina Iliopoulou in translation

Katerina Iliopoulou in translation

ARMCHAIR I, II

At midday Mister T. opens the window and leans out into (towards) the yard. The light falls on him suddenly like a guillotine and cuts him in two. (It is in light’s nature to brake things). Everything in there is vibrating: Leaves, bags and anonymous plants infecting the world with their inconsolable and suffocating presence. Mister T. turns in again and sits on his armchair. The armchair is a Sphinx of the Desert. In her arms he becomes stone. She teaches him what stillness is about*. It is a labor as wild and toilsome as the exercise of a Samurai. On the big white wall across him the branches of the lemon tree are projected. They turn denser as they sway. A wild animal used to live among them: The desired one, the frightened one/the dark one. It turned out that it was impossible to tame it. Mister T. loved it so much that one day he swallowed it. He has regretted it ever since. This deed, which has been the product of pure impulse, did not result in acquiring any of the animal’s characteristics. Thus, he continues to call it out of its cage, which he knows is himself. Rarely, it consents and begins to move inside him very slowly. It’s burning soft paws, touch the bony keys of his spine. It’s speeding breath makes his chest to billow. When the climbing is complete Mister T. becomes a figurehead. With wooden sculpted eyes he sinks into the animal’s gaze. The deep bronze gong of his heart is pounding. The wall is branching out.

* (a lesson for stillness)

“Stillness means to open up

To be crossed by untraceable animals

To become the one nobody knows

Never before and ever after

Give your gaze away

And the wall will become a place:

Destination and origin of the cargo of longing

The enormous mirror of riddles”

DESK I: Waiting station

Currier of the elbows’ weight

The horror of the white paper

The woodworm, the metronome of silence

Digs its blind invisible labyrinths into matter

Mister T. lights up a cigarette

Lifts his head up and listens:

 What the woodworm said:

 
Silence is not a disease in need of a cure

It s only water’s weaving deep in the sea

A cancelled journey and its longing

Silence is no sheet that covers the world

But bifurcating hunger which beats you all

Who will the branches cut to brake the spell?

Who will spread silver on the glass to make a mirror?

DESK II: Departure station

He has been in this wilderness before.

A bunch of children and some stray dogs are playing

They know nothing of moon’s white metals

They have no wounded knees

They don’t know night or day

All they know is endless play

In this world he is but a paper shadow

Someone who sings before the full moon

Someone who drags his chains through snow

Every time before he makes his way back

He writes down his name on a small piece of paper

And buries it in the ground

Who knows what he is expecting then from this strange seed.

From the collectionMister T. , Melani 2007, translated by Konstantin Matsukas

Copyright Katerina Iliopoulou, 2007

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