I
Sea of iron. Moon silent as pain in the depth of the mind. A body swept here and there on the rock like seaweed or a lifeless tentacle, fruit of a womb ship-wrecked by the winds, ensanguined and flesh-filled mire. The left arm cut short, the right to the end of the forearm, a rotted stick raving amid the water’s lungs. Of the ravaged mouth there remained only a wound which closed slowly. From the eyes a blurred light. The eyes without lids. The legs down to the ankles – no feet. Spasms.

II
Judgment of the sea, shackles from broken sobs
beneath the dry bowl’s split eyelids
an unseen prey –
plunder from passions’ tombs, litanies to the senses
on the point of crumbling, inarticulate melodies, lava
from beheaded rivers
blades of the waves cut deeply into the screen;
development of an hour-glass, epidemic
unmixed visions of heroes leaning
into the drunken veins of the light
the tempest that winters on the marshes –
shedding its leaves the return
of a dismembered body in the spring.

Ill
Dead jaws biting on wintry streams
broken teeth where the victim’s tremor
has disinterred their roots before adoring the hook
around the imprints of the ecstasy and the desolation
among the hecatomb’s aged branches
they are spread like a net towards the pallid sky
which like a trembling kiss falls from your lips;
regiments of the dead whispering unceasingly
in a limitless graveyard, within you
too you can no longer speak, you are drowning
and the familiar pain touches
outlets in the untrodden body
now you can walk no longer –
you crawl, there where the darkness is deeper
more tender, carcass
of a disembowelled beast
you embrace a handful of bed-ridden bones
and drift into sleep.

*From the collection ”Poena Damni The First Death”, Shoestring Press, 2000. Translation: Shorcha Sullivan. The original poems in Greek published as “”Poena Damni Ο Πρώτος Θάνατος”, Εκδόσεις Οδός Πανός, Αθήνα 1996.