These are a few poems by Zefi Daraki who is one of my favourite modern Greek poets, translated into English.

1.

A swollen sun was lagging at my feet

shattered skies crippled seas – bleeding from our old laughter

and myself brought centuries back from the madrigals

I was trying to give new shape to the seashells

but a world was coming off with my steps

Don’t you have other sweeter doors? I would ask

seashores engraved upon stone dusks

shops and houses – I was walking there

surrendered to everything that was once a cry

at night I would curl up into a life of my own

still smiling a little like a half moon

-she was steaming like the spring in the trees with a half-crazed dress

but I was asking for more than I should have

in a world ready to fall apart – in a market where they sell the fruit backwards

2.

Darkness flowing into your darkness

you could be flowing for centuries

          I immobilize you

with the sin of writing

you become then

the future of an abstract present

between negation and negation

between the reality of this afternoon

          and its denial

and so you are born with an innermost aversion

to your revelations because

the woman died

in the body’s basements like you

writing and sin

 You’re dying on top of yourself.

3.

Inside the mirror I remember everything

from the moment I

stepped on the mine

of men’s world

Me Claudine, I won’t go down

I will go up the steps to my grave

In this alien landscape,

I’ve kept a sorrow of death for you

whilst I will be washed by rainfalls

and wind songs…

Trnsl: Nefeli Papadimitropoulou