Diaries of Exile

November 24, 1948

Day of stone, words of stone.

Caterpillars crawl up the wall.

A snail, house on its back

appears in its doorway

it might stay, might go.

Everything is as it is.

It’s nothing.

That nothing is not soft.

It’s made of stone.

Everything was forgotten before it was said.

And silence is no refuge.

The stool has its patience.

The rain comes

washes the birds’ tiles

assumes the weight of the unspeaking.

The toothbrush is sad

like all things.

We pretend not to see.

We light the lamp.

November 25

Our people are far away.

The letters are few.

The flies are dying of cold.

We watch them fall to the ground.

Later we sweep them up.

November 26

This cold makes things hard for us.

The water is freezing, our food is freezing.

The sun white, flush to the windowpanes

a sun of snow and old stamps.

Only the pitchers hold

something of home and memory.

A hand that walks through the air

with needle and thread

is an episode with no continuation.

On the wall, the still shadow

of a voice that said nothing.

A conversation with a broken arm

a broken gramophone record

a moon in the frozen water

the nighttime chair.

Sleep is slow.

So snuff out the lamp.

I can’t bear for there to be light

when I can’t see.

November 27

An order on the kitchen’s wooden door.

We had decided to content ourselves with little.

Saturday came to a close

with a rusted tin moon.

A dog-cloud gnaws at our sleep.

On Sundays we always have a headache.

The smoke rises from within.

The cigarette is a pretext.

We eat, we sweep, we sleep.

The blind man, wakeful

gropes the air with his hands.

November 28

The deck of cards has no numbers.

The jack is unarmed.

The queen chews mothballs.

We escaped behind a word.

The other side

was nothing

but an overcoat buttoned to the neck.

November 29

Censored postcards. Snow.

I remember a pair of boots

full of snow.

I want to give objects a meaning

they don’t have.

A man with his beard

a table

not a tree.

The doorknob was warm

once

like a hand.

But on that night and the other

was the same stammering moon.

There’s time, we used to say, for mistakes

for repentance.

It’s enough if stronger trees come.

No. No.

Close the shutters.

There’s no more telling lies.

November 30

When the snow melts

we might hear our voices.

Mightn’t we?

December 1

You don’t find a moment to look

though for days you’ve thought

of looking

at the bulls’ shadow in the cloud

at the girl shoveling manure

at certain faces of the hills

in relation to the barbed wire.

Phases of wind in the wind.

Forget about words.

Carry the dead on doors

quickly, quickly, quicker still.

The room is bare.

The surgeon’s plastic gloves

have holes in the them.

I can see his fingers.

Old newspapers

tangled in the dried-up cotton plants.

A dog cuts through the wind

with its nose.

A week’s worth of trash

bones, snow, poems

under the bed.

December 2

The sky is a hole.

We don’t fit in.

Sleeplessness. The cigarette. The wind.

I don’t want to speak.

Who could hear like this?

December 3

The bread grew moldy, and the years.

Say something light enough

for these hands to lift.

Things don’t happen

as you expect them to.

The cloud isn’t always

a faithful dog.

And the most hidden key

one day is lost.

December 4

Sheep, sheep of cold weather

little poem

take my hand.

The dawn has a thorn

and a stool.

At least until evening let’s believe.

Take off your shoes, moon.

I can’t fall asleep lying on my back.

But if I turn onto my side I’ll hurt.

The door is open.

I can’t leave.

December 5

Smooth-cheeked kid uncombed unwashed

at morning call with clouds for company

dark red sweater unbuttoned pants

still sleepy — a scrap of sleep melting in his hair

a rembetika song in his pocket

I’ll comb you, I’ll wash you, I’ll tighten your belt

I’ll take back all the words they took from me

the words no one knows to give me

the words I can’t ask for.

December 6

When the signal was given, we weren’t there.

No, we were there, but we refused.

Between the signal and the refusal

we now chase a bird

or the wind.

Does the sun hang

from the hook of a word?

You’re unjust.

December 7

The cook left his pots

and is feeding a sparrow.

But the song doesn’t last long,

the dead take it underground.

On packs of cigarettes

we scribble hurried numbers

that correspond to nothing.

Addition — subtraction, addition — subtraction.

And yet, calculating, calculating

you manage in the end not to cry.

December 8

Quiet day. An empty table.

I see things as they are.

I have my hands in my pockets.

Who can I thank for this?

Under the lukewarm water of night I held

the hand of sleep and the sense of forgetting

the texture of the blanket and of the wall.

If you lift the sheet

you won’t find me.

Try to find me — don’t you understand?

I’m deeper in.

There were two glasses on the table

a stool in the corner

the shadow of a hand that might have picked flowers

a shadow split between bed and ceiling

I don’t remember I wasn’t quick enough to see

only the shadow of the window that didn’t open

on the white wall

and the hand that didn’t cut flowers

the hand that itself was cut in the first instant of moonlight

falling in the middle of the road in the muddy waters

beside the broken wheel of the mail truck.

A mandolin an angry angel

a glass of water a cigarette

the sound that binds us together for a moment beyond our solitude

so we can part again without saying goodnight.

Later the eyes that open two holes in the wall.

I planted a tree. I’ll raise it.

Whatever happens I’m not going back.

December 9

I’ll hold on to the dust from your hair

your raised collar that winter afternoon

beside the old train cars.

There I saw more of you than I do here

I kissed the train’s shadow

on the foreign road you crossed

kicking a dry branch with your foot.

December 10

I ask, I ask, tell me,

but first put down that knife

I’m not a sheep, I kick at the wind.

December 11

The floor seems in a good mood today

as does the cane bench

I look at everyone the same way

it’s quiet

I like it

I want to hold on to it.

And yet

a snuffed lamp in the morning

doesn’t give you the slightest idea

of what night can be.

December 12

The color that suits me most doesn’t suit me now –

I see it on the hands of others.

The afternoon is sad.

A lone dog walks through the field.

Hands locked in pockets.

The inner barbed wire. The outer barbed wire.

I think how refusal

is not a permanent position –

like the chair behind the door.

December 13

The ball continually between

two kicks

and I watch myself playing myself

the only spectator

punished by not being sad.

The people work for as long as they last

and last longer than they can.

We will carry stones

we will chop wood

we will clean toilets.

I too.

I want to look out

to where things aren’t so difficult

the aluminum cups the jugs the pots and pans

the drying rack with clean dishes each morning

opposite the window

a square of soft orange light

that doesn’t fold up — it unfolds.

December 14

A Monday made of snow

Tuesday a continuation of Monday

nothing began nothing ended.

The broken oar

the storm bell

an umbrella –

the eternal suspicion of hypocrisy.

The voices always take the stance

of a shoeless corpse.

Mud

after a point

is no longer mud.

You step freely.

Well

the dead

have it pretty good.

December 15

Saturday becomes a hammer at the end of the road.

We walk we walk we know

we walk butting the wind with our heads

leaning slightly forward so as not to hear

the sound of our shadow behind us.

Later we try to stick back on, with flour paste,

a severed head.

December 16

We are clean we await our time

we are just and resolute

the snow spreads itself quietly

beneath the black almond trees and the barbed wire

with the roots that curl around the lowest stone

leaving a hungry sparrow above.

A good time for forgetting

and for the knowledge of forgetting.

Later on people get angry,

earlier they don’t know.

Naked trees and busts of statues.

The jackdaws walk on the snow.

We forgot everything

we left

a mug of tea on the table

for someone who never came;

a mug — no longer steaming.

It’s good he never came, the snow says;

it’s good he never came, — the snow is good.

December 19

It’s cold. We peeled potatoes.

We washed our hands. We combed our hair.

We stood there with the comb in our hand.

A comb always maintains its doubts

that things are ever so simple.

December 20

Not a cow or a dog in the fields.

The guard at his post, collar raised.

The wind has taken the fuzz off things.

Nothing is soft.

A woman came out onto her doorstep

she lights her brazier

the wind took her place in the room

the smell of charcoal remained

and the woman, one with the door.

If a laugh falls in the wind

it won’t be from joy or from spite;

it’s a laugh that has nothing

not even the fear that it’s nothing.

December 21

Of course certain things must exist

even outside the mirror

I sit and smoke

if I have time.

December 22

When we go out at night to take a leak

the moon is above us.

A distant relation

the scent of sugar and cinnamon

then the cold gets colder.

December 23

There is always the same wrinkle

beneath each no.

Only they multiply

and deepen.

December 24

Each morning flocks of wild geese

head south.

We watch them, unmoving.

You get tired of looking up.

Soon enough we lower our heads.

December 25

The window brings in the sky

in little squares.

Everything is tormented

like the old women gathering radishes.

Even the stones.

Was Christ really born in a season like this?

December 27

There are four walls

I count them

I have five fingers

I count them too.

White sheet white Tuesday

white horse

muddy snow

I can’t find the number

I can’t decide.

December 29

I enter the forest

deeper in is the sleeping lion

I walk softly, a bird on my shoulder.

January 2, 1949

We take walks on the strip of road

that they designated ours

the old men play with their worry beads

up and down, up and down in the same place

we don’t move our hands

we move our heads

nodding to someone who never appears.

We haven’t befriended the clouds.

January 4

And suddenly

a memory of birds

that sank into the unknown.

January 5

The three lighted windows

in the closed-up house.

Was it ours once?

Everything is

like the light we miss.

January 6

The moon has

many unrented rooms.

That’s why, then?

That’s why.

January 8

I did everything by halves — he said;

leave me alone.

Remember.

My hands don’t listen to me.

I did everything by halves;

pity me.

Animals and chairs

have four legs.

I have one.

January 10

You have to tie your own hands.

You tie them.

Night cuts the cords.

January 12

Mirror, you at least

tell me,

does this spit suit my forehead?

January 13

Behind me the window

as if I’ve loaded a basket of flowers

onto my back.

Still?

Again?

Don’t think.

January 15

Step by step I besiege the black spot

I double the green of a leaf

I multiply a feeling of quiet

I use metaphors to transport

formerly elsewhere nowhere.

Suddenly I feel myself

besieged by the black spot.

January 18

Our house, you said. Which house?

Our house is over there

with the single bed

with the broom

with the unsuspecting poems

not yet torn.

January 20

He speaks

the most ordinary words in the world.

He who knows what goes on

under the stones

understands.

January 21

A cessation.

You’re not searching.

How nice it is tonight.

Two birds fell asleep in your pockets.

January 22

He rested his forehead

on the table with the bread

calm as a statue

between glory and death.

January 23

At last

the mirror shows you

your severed hands

though you have no hands to applaud

your victory.

January 24

I rested my mouth on your memory

I sat a vigil for pain and pleasure

between the four candles

of snuffed lines.

January 25

For a moment we took refuge

against the latrine wall.

The wind was cutting.

An old man stared at a cloud.

I looked at him smiling

in the light of that cloud — so peaceful,

so far removed from desire and pain –

I was jealous.

Old people agree with the clouds.

And it’s taking us a long time to get old.

January 26

I want to compare a cloud

to a deer.

I can’t.

Over time the good lies

grow few.

January 30

Night comes

hands in her armpits

into the soot of our fear

unspeaking.

All our suspicions were right.

The darkness hides nothing.

A bat came in through the window.

It doesn’t matter.

January 31

Mother night — he said;

wrap me in your black hair

riddled as I am by your stars

living the humiliation

of not being dead.

(He was talking to himself, face to the wall.

But he spoke clearly

perhaps hoping someone might hear.)

Concentration camp for political prisoners

Kontopouli, Limnos, 1948–49