Eleni Fourtouni
1.
Salamanders live in the old house.
In the garden plumed serpents
build their nests. Squirrels
perform over my head, leap
across the rafters, pause on the window ledge;
they watch me sleep.
She'll go at daybreak.
A night visitor, that's all she is.
2.
Nights come quickly in this place.
No sooner has the sun set than
dark takes over. Only a narrow strip of light
lingers on the mountain rim,
a reminder that elsewhere in the world
the sea basks in long afterglows,
reluctant to let go of the sun. Like
lovers embracing.
3.
At dusk the mountains move closer.
We stand almost breast to breast
as I lean out to fasten the shutters,
breast to breasts, those numinous
masses of dark and I.
At dusk I pray
that their embrace will not be a vise
around my heart, a trap
nailing me on the demanding
granite, far from the sea--
my playmate,
my light-handed lover.
4.
I padlock the garden gate,
pull up the ladder, bolt the door,
leave the candle burning, hoping
it will last the night. My blood
tingles (is it terror?)
when a salamander scuttles on the wall.
But there is no one in the village,
only Mitchakas, Katerini, and myself.
There is no one in the village,
only Mitchakas, Katerini, and myself.
Then why do I padlock the garden gate,
pull up the ladder, bolt the door,
leave the candle burning, hoping
it will last the night....
5.
A bit of plaster--a boulder, crushes
on the floor--bolt upright
from a tenuous sleep, I aim
my flash-light around the room.
A jackal howls in the distance.
And what is that muffled sound?
Footsteps?
He hasn't fooled me, that old Seilenos,
disguised as a shepherd by day.
I've seen the evil glint when he nails
his eyes on my breasts. When his wife isn't looking.
6.
Midnight, and I walk in the village streets
everything familiar, known for uncounted
generations. Even the ghosts--the dusky men
and women who made love inside those roofless
houses, their bodies taut with desire.
Season in and season out
they plowed these fallow fields. The trees
they planted--apple and walnut--heavy with ripe
unclaimed fruit, wait for the reapers--
the driving wind and rain.
7.
When the clouds come crawling
down the mountains, when they flood
the ravines and spill onto the paths,
when they take over the village, inundate
the houses, drown the cry of the jackal,
I go out looking for them. With strands
of fog tangled in my voice I call their names,
as far back as I remember:
Yioryitcha, Panayiota, Lefkothea...
All these grandmothers. I'm here because of them,
said my daughter, age six, born in the USA.
8.
I linger when I come to the dark place
where the Old Tree stands.
Under her snarling branches,
I lift my head, my eyes meet her eyes
of stone, my throat bare,
I stand expectant, vulnerable,
exposed to her will.
9.
I found it yesterday, at dusk.
For years I meant to walk up there
but the dogs barred the way to the spring.
It wasn't until the girl gave my safe passage
that I dared cross over. And even then
fear plundered my heart--a girl of twelve
keeping back the hounds!
I held it up-side-down at first
and took it for a stone, eroded,
deformed. (Rain and wind work
in strange ways here.) When I set it right
I saw the mouth, the toothless grin,
and on the forehead the telling sign.
Nature's sculpture, I say
to those who ask. No one remembers.
A stone is a stone to them,
And I an eccentric,
a daughter of the land gone wrong.
*Touched.
10.
At the bottom of the ravine,
behind Panagia's chapel--the dream
was clear--at the spot where the young poplar grew--
Ah, that old spring?
the great earthquake buried it when the Turks
invaded, five hundred years ago and more--
buried and dead by now, lost. The men nodded.
Yes, it had properties--cleaned the poison
out of man and beast. They remember
their grandfathers digging for it,
year after year after year they dug.
No, there's nothing there, and a dream
is only a dream, when the dreamer is touched.
Every night that summer,
and all the summers after that
until the end
she'd go to the place,
and lie there,
her ear close to the root.
For hours she waited
until the water throbbed underground,
plain as her heartbeat.
When she died
they buried her under the poplar.
It was the gravedigger who found the spring
six feet deep.
11.
Swift, emerald
lizards glide across my threshold.
They linger after a while,
longer every day, tilt their head
sideways and contemplate me,
wonder at my origin,
assess my worth.
12.
The spring at the bottom of the ravine has turned me
into one of its own--a gurgling mountain stream.
For the third time tonight I grope for the matches,
light the candle. The blue enamel of the chamber pot
emerges from among the shadows.
A storm rages outside. Solid sheets of rain
beat against my half-hinged shutters,
the floor creaks, the bolts rattle, the wind roars
like a thousand waves rising up through the mountains.
I gaze upward for comfort, praying that the carpenter
has done his job well. My roof spreads over me like
the wings of the Archangel--smooth planks of poplar
nailed closed to each other above crisscrossed ribs
of smoke-dark rafters. And over them the tiles, row
upon snug row of well-fired clay secured with
a thick layer of mortar.
A good roof over my head, a pot to pee in....
13.
The tiniest green spider
wanders across the foreign
territory of my notebook,
an inspector, here to scrutinize
my verses. She pauses
at a doubtful verb, skips
over an unnecessary adjective,
deletes a comma, an exclamation point,
and leisurely,
supremely indifferent,
she spins her way
out of my human
attempts to write about all this.
*Ms. Fourtourni's original contained some Greek which could not be reproduced here, but is included in the downloadable PDF version.