Diaries of Exile

January 18, 1950

The dead are many

very many.

We don’t fit. We’re crammed in.

A gull

shook out its towel.

Nobody wiped his hands.

Nobody saw.

January 27

You said:

a ship

sketched in chalk

on the prison’s inner door.

Can you fool death?

You can’t fool it.

February 3

All through the night the dead

crunch pieces of ice from the moon.

We no longer know what to do

not to hear.

And the mice eat our bread.

Fear is greater than rage.

February 7

Shadows loaded with stones

the barbed wire

you forgot the proper pronunciation

of your name.

A black cat runs

with the moon tied to its tail.

Strange.

Such great silence

and nobody wakes.

February 15

Where does this barbed wire end?

Snails crawl across the clothes of the killed.

Yet we did not come into the world

only to die.

Since at dawn

it smells of lemon peel.

February 19

Frozen sun. It gives no warmth.

Ten days of storm.

The sick have no appetite.

Everyone is sick.

We throw a lot of bread into the sea.

At least the gulls eat it.

Talk stops quickly.

We’re left outside our voice.

We hear and don’t hear the waves.

Under every word

is a dead person.

February 21

These people have understood much

they talk little, talk not at all

they carry a number of keys in their pockets

but have no door to open.

Sunday evenings they sit

on the stone steps

they don’t look at the stars

they don’t hear the sea

they don’t have trouble sleeping.

If anything good is to come

it will come from them.

February 23

The moon white

drum-tight

like the belly of the drowned.

Manolis used to say:

everything’s going to be fine.

His heart said so.

Manolis

down in the deep water

with the blind seaweed.

February 24

The flashlight stalks two broken arms

and you didn’t know if the severed foot was yours.

That was when we came together under the high wall

each of us alone striding over

the severed foot that was ours.

March 3

The exiles’ bundles on the playing field.

The match you light makes a lot of noise.

The cigarette burns with a bright flame.

Be careful.

April 24

The leaf’s shadow is opposite the sun.

Take off your shoes. Rest a while. Otherwise remember.

The woodcutters’ hands smell of pine sap.

Little girls behind the baskets

arrange the purple and the red.

Your mistake is that you don’t want to die.

But maybe the dead feel hunger too.

April 25

This year the blackbirds are the tiles

on the roof of summer.

Fear gropes like the blind man’s hand

for the handle of the door.

You sit on the rock

You’re calm because you’re tired

you’re good because you were afraid

you forget easily because you don’t want to remember

you don’t forget.

May 1

The soldier crushed his cigarette into the ground.

How easily every single thing can be crushed.

Across the water, Lavrio.

Who is it who said: the women reapers

with the swallows’ scythes?

Cover your ears with your hands.

Shame. Shame.

May 3

The people sit in the sun

they take off their jackets

their boots become tight

the soldiers’ armpits sweat.

You rub a little thyme between your fingers.

This is how we slowly slowly age

above the second death.

May 4

Someone is smoking beside the guardhouse.

The evening star looks out above the mountain

as if it’s knocked on the wrong door.

The utility poles darken

they stretch full length

afraid they’ll bend.

May 5

They owe us a lot.

If we don’t get it back

we’ll owe that too.

The floorboards are moldy from the damp

the windows warped the panes broken

dirtied sheets loose boots

the bread has no odor

the people have grown very thin

like saints.

May 6

Someone spoke. The other didn’t answer.

The words under the eyes are old

like the worn shoes under the bed.

The light comes on in the hospital

the way a window shuts.

We won, you said?

Unarmed victory, uncertain, already forgotten.

On one side and on the other: barbed wire.

You look straight ahead. There is no other road.

We won, you said.

One ship leaves another comes

one man comes another leaves –

where does death finally end?

Ash covers the fire

the flag covers the murdered man.

He who won he who lost

under the flag or with no flag

dead.

You’ll never know whether he signed.

It’s getting dark.

Again we’re easily fooled

trading two drams of hope

for five counterfeit stars.

May 7

Black jet-black island

above the black stone the lights come on

rats crisscross the toilets

stand still listen to the loudspeakers

look us in the eye unhurried

then calmly leave.

Skinned rams hang

over our sleep.

May 8

Two sandals on the rock. A drenched rope.

The man fishing across the way.

The two sitting on the dry grass.

The wire sitting above us all.

How do they come together? How do we?

The soldiers make sure no one is watching

so they can smile.

May 9

A soldier’s bitter cigarette on the beach

the first star as if seen from another’s window

the bread in the pack. They forgot us.

Quiet little harbor tidied up in the evening

can’t fathom at all what our nights are like

just like the air that sleeps inside a bell.

Oh, fish, fish, fish

in the blind water.

May 10

The camp bed on our shoulder

the aluminum plate in our bag

our whole household under our arm

the whole world on our back. We march.

Sometimes we gripe over the bread

sometimes we hide behind cigarette smoke

sometimes we wait tightly together

sometimes we’re afraid apart.

We’ve marched a long way.

At this hour who would come by?

May 11

Narrow endless shed

like a road in an unknown town

you don’t speak the language of this door.

A sick man coughs at the far end

two others play backgammon

that one is making his bed

that one is watching the flies on the windows

behind the flies he looks at the sea

at a ship being tossed about.

So, to drown –

is that too a way to live?

May 11

After the rain the buildings and the stones

change color.

Two old men sit on the bench. They don’t talk.

So much shouting and so much silence remains.

The newspapers age in an hour.

Stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed

the monotony of change — stressed;

unstressed, stressed, strophe, antistrophe

and neither rage nor sorrow.

Evening lights out;

just as heavy for the one who struck

as for the one he struck.

The men sit on the stones

pare their nails.

The others died.

We forgot them.

May 14

Over here the day is long

then night falls all at once

sleep becomes difficult

you hear those who snore under the blankets

you hear their beards growing

you hear them scratching their balls cursing.

Later when the wind dies down

a paper sound remains in the night

and suddenly the wooden clack

of eyelids opening

to chase after dreams.

May 14

We’ve gotten used to the gulls

they bring no message

they open and close their wings

as if opening and closing the shutters

in an empty house.

We’ve gotten used to the sleepless nights

to sleep shattered like broken windowpanes

to the cripples with their crutches

the filth on the beach

the bread ration thrown into the sea

the potato peelings stuck on the rocks

like gutted intestines

the shadow of a cloud over Sounio across the way

the sound of the chain falling into the water at night

we’ve gotten used to people forgetting us.

And that statue without arms

was beautiful

you didn’t know where it was pointing

or if it was.

May 15

The guard sits behind the barbed wire

the lapels of his trench coat raised.

The other day I noticed his arms

they are thick and strong

he would have carried the flag in one of our parades.

Now he sits behind his rifle

as if behind a wall.

Behind the wall sits spring –

he can’t see it.

I see it and smile

and I’m sad

that he can’t see it.

He’s bound the shadow of his rifle around my eyes

as if it were a black handkerchief,

but I want him to see spring and smile.

May 16

A soldier leans against a telegraph pole

smoking his cigarette

maybe listening to the piano on the loudspeakers.

In the tents the exiles

are eating their evening meal.

The moon is big

like the big pot in the kitchen

that they wash in the sea.

And of course the trees can’t turn green

at random.

May 17

The hospital boat mirrored in the water

white with an apricot stripe way up high

is beautiful

in the bowl of morning quietness

like an old sorrow in a new poem.

May 18

They abandoned us with our wounds.

The soldiers come out on fatigue duty

barefoot heads shaven jackets torn

we see them over there chopping wood

perched on the mountain — as though they love us.

When night falls

they come down shortly before lights out

they piss into the sea in groups

watching the lights of Lavrio. They don’t talk.

They’re waiting for something. We’re waiting for something.

Outside all night the moon saws

long planks from great fallen trees.

For doors. Yes, for doors.

May 19

The mad and the crippled multiplied

precisely now

that the great suffering is over.

In the evenings we can hear

the madman’s cry from the roof

amplified over the sea.

The eyes widen

dark so dark

like two gypsy shacks on the edge of town.

Inside two half-naked gypsies

are beating iron.

This clanging

makes it hard to write a letter

and even harder to write a poem.

Here everything has been written in blood.

May 22

He arrived this afternoon the way

one arrives who’s been gone for years

with faded baggage

covered with foreign customs stamps.

He came for us.

He doesn’t recognize us.

We recognized him.

May 24

We wrote so many nice wills

they were never opened

no one read them

because we didn’t die.

We said things

that a person says only once

we gave things

that a person gives only once.

Big words

so simple

like the spoons in the knapsacks

of those killed.

We saw eternity

mirrored head to foot

in the glasses of the nearsighted man

they killed two months ago.

And just think how it would be

if you could no longer pronounce

“we”

without lowering your eyes

without blushing.

May 27

Here where even pain got tired

solitude is more certain.

And you can’t hide from your eyes.

A naked woman

kneeling in the middle of a room

with closed shutters

plucks a beautiful hawk

tries its feathers on her hat

in front of the mirror on the old wardrobe.

Slight slight movements

you watch them

so slight

that you know: come night

you’ll be very angry.

May 28

No one lives in these houses

or at least no one seems to.

But the owner is in there

unseen persistent despotic

for all his wounds.

This is why the holes

the dolphins opened in the water

were there to hide the proof

to hide the first word

with its many consequences

that we never uttered

and that never ends.

May 29

We considered

the absolution we would grant

to others and to ourselves.

Of course death

would suit us very well

against the background of a white wall.

We failed.

Even a dilapidated house

looks less old

with a flag.

Sometimes the opposite is the case.

How can you fashion — he said –

a true astronomy of the soul?

The blanket is heavy

on the naked body.

Beautiful forgotten statue –

they painted it red

it died too.

May 30

The soldiers on the low wall

unshaven

a sorrow yawns in their eyes

they listen to the loudspeakers to the sea

they don’t hear a thing

perhaps they would like to forget.

At sunset

they go slowly to the gully to do their business

as they button up their pants

the new moon catches their eye.

The world could have been beautiful.

May 31

Kaiti writes:

in your garden the roses have run riot

yellow and white daisies

tall as you are

we washed the windows and the chandelier

your room smells of soap

I caressed your clothes and your books.

Ah Kaiti

we here

at the edge of our handkerchief

tied tight as a knot our vow to the world.

June 1

In the morning

the horizon is

the whitewashed facade of an orphanage.

In the evening it hangs

from the cripple’s crutches

like an island sock full of holes.

At night those killed

gather together under the stones

with some notes in their cigarette packs

with some densely scribbled scraps of paper in their shoes

with some illicit stars in their eyes.

Above them the sky grows larger

grows larger and deeper

never tires.

Concentration camp

Makronisos, 1950