Τοπία Εφηβείας, ποιήματα του Quartier Latin

Publisher: Greek Book
Published: 1st June 1969

I walk the Saint Michel boulevard, along the picturesque Seine, on the Rue des Feuillantines. The rainy weather in Paris gives me a new sense of poetry. And I am already planning my new poetic collection Landscapes of Adolescence. Rue des Feuillantines, where my dormitory was located at the magical Quartier Latin, had all the flimsy charm of Paris, healing my wounds. In Paris, I experience different emotions. And I find these new experiences exciting. The fact that from the desolate rocks of my island, I found myself in the heart of Paris, with the theaters and such friendly faces around me, makes my soul unfold, gazing at new horizons. My poetry reaches another dimension. Theatrical. And all my theatrical plays "go through" the Landscapes of Adolescence. They become one with me. One with my poetry.

Rue des Feuillantines

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn
T. S. Eliot

Always the rocks of Myrina
With their grey vesper bone
The rocks the beach and the face
Lost and gained
That face with the winds in its eyes

The time that carries in his back our bones
our voice and gaze
Broken sound of rust
The words that once enchanted us
Lost and gained
Behind the ephemeral leaves
And the hands that refuse to be untied
Νοσταλγία μιας πίκρας αλλοτινής
The broken sound that weeps in memory.

Boulevards of the world that you journey our wasteland
in your delusional hospitality
Lights and voices of people, names in hurry
Fingers that shine uncertainly the Solar noon

Rue des Feuillantines. Hotel de Paris.
"A sunny room, please..."

The chestnut trees strip silently in their melancholy
And the earth drinks softly the rotten warm leaves
Grey cindery mouth
That consumes time with our decay
And carries our memory inside the hardened roots
Leaves from another time will cover
Our nakedness.

"The room is a bit dark... As
you see, it rains... If you want..."

Sound of a distant bell tender and bitter
Like our first poetry
Mother on the doorstep
Where once was the honeysuckle and a swallow's nest
Violet nights that joined on her lips
Our youthful names
"Marina... Sephes... Alexis..." The garden has fallen asleep
And the birds and the souls of the flowers have gone quiet
"Tomorrow again... Tomorrow it's hide and seek and marbles..."

My fingers bleed. The earth. The memory.
Time that has dressed with our skin
And we have nothing to touch with
Mother's face
And we don't know how to rescue her voice
"Tomorrow again... Tomorrow... Marina, Sephes, tomorrow..."

"Yes, I can see... The weather here is usually rainy..."
"Oh, yes, yes... usually!"

Boulevards of the world that cross
The gaze and the human wilderness
And you write under your grey skin
Their sorrow and their nostalgia
Bridges of time that you join forgotten hands
In a place that is not tomorrow
That was not yesterday
In a place of your own
Under your grey ephemeral skin
Where our singular conscience lies.

Do you remember?
The window has closed forever
That window that hid your face
I hadn't understood
The window has closed beyond the rain and time