Oregon
Literary
Review
Vol. 2, No. 2

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Tom Doulis
FOUR POEMS BY GEORGE THEMELIS
From The Net of Souls Collection


Born in 1909, George Themelis, an islander by birth (Samos) and a city dwellers (Thessaloniki) for decades, has gone his own way, writing bold poetry like The Net of Souls (1965), liberated by the work of Constantine Cavafy in choice of subject-matter. He has not been given the attention he deserves in the English-speaking world, although he has been widely translated into many continental languages.

Archangelic Sword

 

What shall I do with my eyes.

 my darkened eyes,

Like eyes of the slain.

 

When I look at you, you disappear,

Invisible behind opacity.

 

As though you do not exist, are gone,

As though you had withdrawn your spirit.

 

And only your sorrow remained and fills me.

 

When you don't look at me,

I am continually impoverished

And my blood flees.

I hunger and freeze, am emptied.

 

I become like the unjustly treated, the naked.

 

When your eyelids open

Your look stays with me.

 

Like the scale of a fate that is weighed.

 

Like the quivering of an archangelic sword

Suspended:  will it fall, may it not fall.

 

When you leave me,

I am the empty place,

The empty body, the hollow torso.

 

Full of resonance, stifled breath.

 

Wherever I may go, to whichever

crevice of loneliness I hide

With all my senses sealed,

I feel like an abandoned house,

full of sound, footfalls, silence.

 

Your absence empties the body, wipes clear the face

 


 

 

 

Otherwise Beautiful

 

That which we call  love is not

Eros: the angel with open wings.

 

He changes aspect, is transfigured

becomes beautiful, otherwise beautiful.

 

You cannot bear his beauty.

Animals see him and hide

in their pelts, birds cease their chatter.

 

Bodies hide their shadows.

 

He becomes otherwise beautiful, terribly  beautiful,

as though he'd emerged from the glow of a fire.

 

As powerful as the sea, as the wind.

 

Strong as a pillar of fire, as a mountain.

 

Solitary and monolithic, like a motionless river.

 

As silent as the shadow of a bird, as the throb of a dream.

 

Corrosive as flame, a poem, as fever.

 

Unfeeling as stone, as a naked blade.

 

As hard-hearted as a scale that judges the weight of souls

 


 

 

 

The Crystalline Kiss

 

Much beauty has covered you

great beauty, plenteous and unruffled.

 

With which hands shall I hold you,

that the alabaster not crack and tear,

that your perfect body not slither

and disappear from sight

like a goldfish.

 

I don't know what to do.

 

Shall I cover you with cloth,

hide you under a bed sheet?

 

Shall I embrace or mourn you?

 

I touch your breasts, your hair,

Kiss your lips to waken you.

 

There is an isolation to your lips,

a frightening coldness.

 

As when you bend to kiss,

yourself in a mirror.

 

And are frightened by the cold crystalline kiss.

 


 

 

 

The Net of Souls

 

We fall further and further

we fall silently, sink

deeper and deeper,

into great darkness.

 

We are seized by love

as within a net.

 

We fall

during this resplendent night,

on this earth, this bridge,

this towering ladder of danger.

 

within this net of souls.

 

From brilliance and opacity

to

annihilation.