Monday, July 16, 2012

Hung up on the Goddess


God, I’m a hopeless case— 

Where other mortals see 
Wave after wave of ripples 
Caressing the shore, 

In the foam of my mind I see her 
Multitudinous immortal nipples 
And still thirst for more. 



12 comments:

  1. Vassilis,

    though getting closer and closer to old age, I still mistaken them for dangerous shoals.

    And you think you're hopeless..

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  2. The logbook of a born navigator.

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  3. wave after wave after wave
    goddess after goddess after goddess
    in the froth or in the foam
    there is no end to it
    ; until there is

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  4. Comrades,
    IN THE GODDESS’ NAME I SUMMON YOU. . .*

    Oil on limbs,
    maybe a rancid smell
    as on the chapel’s
    oil-press here,
    as on the rough pores
    of the unturning stone.

    Oil on hair
    wreathed in rope
    and maybe other scents
    unknown to us
    poor and rich
    and statuettes offering
    small breasts with their fingers.

    Oil in the sun
    the leaves shuddered
    when the stranger stopped
    and the silence weighed
    between the knees.
    The coins fell:
    “In the goddess” name I summon you…”

    Oil on the shoulders
    and the flexing waist
    legs grass-dappled,
    and that would in the sun
    as vespers sounded
    as I spoke in the church yard
    with a crippled man.

    *Keeley and Sherrard’s note to this Seferis poem: See Herodotus, I, 199: “When a woman has once taken her place there, she does not go home before some stranger has thrown money into her lap and has had intercourse with her outside the temple; but as he throws the money, he must say: ‘I summon you in the name of the goddess Mylitta’ (that is, the Assyrian name for Aphrodite)…There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus.”

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  5. great poem Vassilis.. and WOW what a custom that is!

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  6. Thanks, Aditya for the positive reinforcement--as for that curious custom, it does sound rather aphrodisiacal, doesn't it?

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  7. Hahaha.. It sure does and you are living up to your words!!

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    Replies
    1. What's the saying, Vassilis, after Coleridge, all those immortal nipples: water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Great poem.

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  8. Haha, thanks Elisabeth—it does look like I have a one-track mind leading straight to the ocean’s edge, doesn’t it, though it’s difficult to approach Coleridge’s powerful visionary poetry; maybe some laudanum spiked with ouzo would help.

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  9. The laudanum would be a fine start. And then the ouzo and -- over the cliff. Ever so softly. Never abandoning the divinely blest single track.

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  10. I'll have to skip the laudanum for reasons only a romantic would understand but the ouzo and the cliff definitely, a fitting finale to my Magnus Opus Definitely Not Lemmings.

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