Lakis Fourouklas's Blog, page 6

Week 2

He is lucky. He feels it. He knows it. He is lucky because the one woman he ever wanted, the one that he desired like a gift from above, is at this very moment sitting next to him.
His left arm seems to embrace her, but no, it doesn't, not exactly. It simply touches her, lightly, like the whisper of a caress. This contact is enough to bring him peace, serenity, to make him close his eyes and imagine with a secret smile their common future.
She's maybe smiling as well right now. Maybe. There's no way to say. But one thing is certain; she enjoys being there, abandoned in his almost hug, feeling his body's warmth and gazing at the endless blue of the ocean.
From my Book of the People 

Rain by Miltiades Malakasis

Rain outside the window is fallingblack are the roofs, dark are the roads,out of the eyes no tears are crawling,which a heavy notion is drowning.
The clouds windswept as theyare quietly groan and cry,my soul they do not enslave,with all the secrets they recite.
Once inside the windowas you sat by my side,I'd see in your sleepy gazethe road's sorrowful rain.
And I'd see, further still,again in your eyes,the clouds that to the skiesthe storm violently carried.
Rain outside the window is fallingblack are the roofs, dark are the roads,out of the eyes no tears are crawling,which a heavy notion is drowning.
Now the clouds hanging above,and then drifting below and rain,in your eyes are mirrored no more,and no other secret yearnings they have…
Translated from Greek by yours truly.
The image was taken taken from here. 

Manto's Review

I Love You by Myrtiotissa

I love you, I cannotanything else say,as deep, as simple,as great!
Here in front of your feetwith longing I liethe many-leafed flowerof my life.
My two hands, beholdoffered to you in a knotto sweetly leanyour head on.
And my heart yearnsand full of jealousy callsto be for you as they area cushion.
Oh my hive, from himyou should drinkthe pure scentsof my soul!
I love you, what else canmy precious tell you,as deep, as simpleas great?
I translated this from Greek. One of the most popular love poems of all time.

Week 1

He never imagined that there would come a day when he could attach a face to the word Happiness. Yes, sure, he had lived some beautiful moments in the past, but this, this was something else.
When his son was born, when he heard him cry for the very first time and then saw him smile to everyone around him, his whole world changed. His laughter became more spontaneous, his life more colorful. He no longer envisioned the future in shades of grey.
Now his most serene moments are those his spends with his child. The child that came to change his outlook and remind him that the dreams belong to all. Just like joy.
From my Book of People

A Eulogy for Love chapter 2

Come to me in the silence of the night;    Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright    As sunlight on a stream;       Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Christina Rossetti
You may never have realized how much I ached for you while your body was still here. Now, I'm left all alone with your soul and my memories flow like fresh water and vanish, and all that remains is their echo. Until when will I wait for you to come again?
The Athenian sun has started picking its head somewhat lazily above the horizon, looking a little bit pale, gifting the land with a yellow annealed hue, a bitter light. It seems to be searching for a destiny, just like I do right now, as I sit down on the ground and look at it straight in its blazing eye, surrendered in memories of a future that was never meant to be.
As I speak to you, at this very moment, soul to soul, I think that your life has brought to me the greatest joy, and your death the most exquisite sorrow. Death may have been for you the salvation that you desperately needed, but for me your going was a freedom that I've never felt the need to conquer.
You were the only goal that I really wanted to succeed in, the one and only peak that I wholeheartedly wanted to reach. I've climbed a million stairs and stretched my hand to touch the sky and it moved further away. That sky was you and now you've become one with the apeiron, the infinite in which there's no place for bodies but only for spirits. Our joys are all passing.
I have never shed a single tear for someone who died before in my life, and yet I've spent the whole night crying for you. In my book though death is nothing but a journey's end, and all the journeys sooner or later come to pass.
My soul that for times immemorial used to resemble a windless port, now looks like a furious sea that fights hard to turn me into a castaway to the seashore of your remembrance.
My thoughts return time and again to the blessed past, to all the things I've left unsaid, to the few I've dared to speak loud. Everyone knew that I loved you, how much I loved you, including you. Before meeting you I was like a turtle that never dared venture out of its shell. I never told anyone what I felt about them, especially the women that had the ill fortune of crossing paths with me. But you came to change me. To change me and go away, as a hurried wanderer.
You, with your watery eyes and shuttered words, made me confess my secret love for you. And you also tried to stop it from breathing out into the open. Despite that I've felt that you loved me also, Eleni, but there was always something or someone pulling you away from me.  What was to blame? Who was to blame? Maybe me who I am not meant to enjoy anything in the world anymore.
I overhear people talking about love and without really realizing it I start laughing. What do they know about love, these people that follow a schedule every single day of their lives? Who kiss each other hurriedly in the morning before going to work? That consider doing something crazy every now and then think "yes, sure, but…"? Who only make love on Friday and Saturday nights, before or after the news hour? That believe that what really counts in life is credit cards, saving accounts and market shares? What do they know about love? Most of them would ignore its very existence if someone else hadn't informed them about it.
To love it to feel pain when your loved one does, to weep when they weep, to share their joy with them, to talk and to listen, to spend your every living breath for them.
The daylight is a devious comrade when it comes to memories. It doesn't even allow you the sweet relief of feeling desperate and expressing that through tears. The night is the big sister of all the souls, the clouds their worries, and the starlit sky the dreams the dead have left behind to those who are still alive, but, alas, don't know how to live.
I will go now. I will go and leave you in your lonesome to rest, at least according to the stupid know-it-alls who claim that the soul shares the same fate with the body. Some other people will come here soon enough, of that I am sure, to light a candle in the memory of the soon to be forgotten, to adorn the dust that covers your shell with brand new marigolds and then water it with the tears of their ignorance, as in their foolishness they think that they cry for you that you are gone and not their egoist selves that have lost you. And, I bet, every single one of them will say, how good a person you were, and what a shame it was that you had to go so early. Every day will be the same, a rerun of the same play, until the body turns into earth, dust, and like dust it dissolves into this overland abyss, blown away by the winds of lost memories, and then you will be forgotten almost by all, my own and only, and eternally beloved.
To be continued
This is the first draft of the translation of my first novella Lathos Pathos that was published in Greek in 2000. The words written in Italian fonts are by the Greek poet Maria Polydouri.
The image was taken from here 

Coyote's Trail by Edward M. Erdelac review

This book is a good old-time western, with cowboys and Indians, Mexicans and white settlers who tend to enforce the laws they created by treating the indigenous population and the poor like subhumans, who have no power and no rights whatsoever.
If there is a driving force in this story I'd say that is hatred. As it is well known, violence breeds violence, so when on two separate occasions the white man's soldiers, or rather mercenaries, commit unspeakable crimes, some of the survivors decide to pay them back with the same coin. But how can the weak beat the strong? And how can the poor beat the rich?
The author talks extensively about the evils of the past, which are not so different from those of today, just by narrating this tale, without even trying to sound didactic. In these pages we meet rich bootleggers and helpless drunks; heartless soldiers and greedy townspeople; whores, desperate souls, and family men who care more about what the others will say than their own flesh and blood.
Na-e-te-nay is an Indian and America a Mexican, and they are the victims of the crimes that I've mentioned above. They live in a land with laws that don't protect them, so how can they get justice? Sooner rather than later they realize that the only way to manage that is by helping each other. As their journey starts, rivers of blood begin to flow. Will they survive this ordeal or not? And if they succeed in their mission, will that give them the peace of mind that they crave?
The reader can feel nothing but sympathy for these two unfortunate people. They may look and sound unlikable quite often, but at a time and at a place like the one they are in, they do seem to stand out as a beacon of light and hope, for those who don't have the power to speak and act for themselves.
I have to admit that when I started reading this book I wasn't so sure that I was going to like it, but in the end it won me over. The background is rich, though bleak, the characters are well crafted, and the action at times is quite breathtaking. Coming to like a book that at the beginning doesn't really excite you is something extraordinary, and I have to give the author his dues for a job well done.
Published in the latest edition of Crime Factory Magazine

Oblation by Kostas Karyotakis

Silver was the forehead. And beautifulyour eyes in blue they glowed.As you were opening the pianotwo new roses in the vases trembledbut now blooms were your temples beautiful.
Your hands were struggling, winning;the buttons were retreating; the notes,the melody as a trophy they gave.We listened. And the feelings, captorsthat their freedom were winning.
I don't remember well, it's been years,but you had I say and sing;except as if the nightingales trill.Loud or silent your lip is a spring,tired deers are my years.
The butterfly will always flyleaving the pollen on the fingers.A rustle as goodbye, your hand silk,and you were gone. From the windowthe butterfly will always fly…
Translated from Greek by yours truly.
The image was taken from here 

Where is my Beauty by Lili Zografou

Ungrateful heart, were all those years that I waited for you not enough? My love for you knew no boundaries. And I've treated my own people without mercy. I haven't even shed a tear when my mother passed away. Your heavy shadow kept me apart from everybody else. It was enormous, like the distances that divided us, like your almost constant silence which multiplied as the years went by to a-sort-of perpetual death. I have never loved you that much, not as much as your death hurt me. How many? Thirty? And the days three hundred and sixty five and the nights double that number. You became an eternity that was missing from my shining youth, which started deeming because of the sleepless nights that began to blur, since it could no longer illuminate the adoration of your gaze that unsettled my guilty walk as it slipped quietly into the half-darkness, while drums where beating in my heart, you fool, you fool, I quietly said to my myself, as if praying, the moment I got away from the conspiratorial whispers in my home that were no doubt plotting some act of sabotage assisted by the guerrilla that was hiding in the cellar, the short hero that would blow you to pieces. The last stab of the knife of my treason would stop my heart from beating the moment I saw the bronze medals of your uniform shining in the dark and as all of a sudden your arms were spread like wings I could only feel the sound of the oceans that encircled me, which delivered me into the wetness of your lips and everything turned to chaos. And truly that was the birth of the Lord and I'd get lost through His love and sing with my body hymns to the harp of the earth. Lord, Lord, blessed is your birth...
An excerpt from a somewhat difficult to translate book by the Greek author, Lili Zografou. Forgive me if this is not perfect but the text is quite poetic and it's not easy to do it justice. I will work on it more eventually.
The image is taken from here 

A Eulogy for Love - Chapter 1

And I'm still trying tounderstand how can aa woman who's loved die
Kostas Karyotakis
You are dead now, my beloved, dead. Like my soul. Now life has lost its meaning for me. It's no life. There's no life. Why live a life that's not whole? The truth is that I was never afraid of death, though I got the chills at the idea that one day I would be gone forever leaving you behind. Forever, there's such finality in this word. But I stayed. You went instead and left me sitting all alone at the edges of a deathly fresh grave, whispering my I love you's to the dirt that covers you, and delivering oaths of undying love to the wind that blows away dreams and phantoms in its passing, and to whom you may lent your thoughts to shuttle to the moon; unless of course those thoughts were just moments ago splashed with pain, like mine, this cruelest of nights, are.
The cemetery is abandoned in the deep darkness of Hades, but the souls that have once loved shine like eternal lighthouses of deliverance, even when everything looks as black as tar. They remember, they forget, they laugh and they cry. Oh, the sad joy of loving you.
My life was always half-empty, full of non material shortages, and that's why I kept leaving; I was going away in search of you, Eleni, to the furthest corners of the earth, to the lands of dreams and long lost sunsets. I was looking for you at the places where I'd like you to be, where I'd like you to be with me. But, you were someplace else, and the wonderful sunsets looked weak and pale in my eyes, tired from the voracious glances of all the people, sad for those who loved but have never been loved in return.
Perfect is what you love with all your heart and is not yours. And you were never mine, except in some of my most crazy of dreams; dreams that make you wake up in the morning with an enormous smile painted on your lips and reflected on your soul, as you feel the happiness of existing in all your being.
You know, Eleni, you've always belonged to someone else and that gave me pain. But you were alive and that blessed me with joy. However, death, some people claim, tends to bind people together, and right now your presence in my soul has become a heartbreaking howl that makes mebleed. I am but a shadow that crawls in the dirt, a leaf that's lost its root and is carried away by the wind.
The silence that permeates this place is reassuring in a way. Here lie the living, in the outside world wander unsatisfied the dead. For those who are here have managed more or less to live somewhat, to perhaps walk the paths of wonder, while the others are more dead than the dead as they go on living, as a friend says.
I could never have imagined that a pile of fresh earth would be enough to sent my dreams packing to the other world, if such a world exists that is. But now as I see it I weep, I regret… I regret for all the tears I have not shed for you during the endless bleak nights of my solitude. Tears never came easy to me. Not then. The tears, I feared, would take away the sorrow and the pain I felt that we were not together, and truth be told, my sad, desperate self wanted to suffer. It needed it like a poison that doesn't kill you but only makes you stronger. Suffering for you meant loving you. But, how do you know, now all those tears that for such a long time I've kept caged deep within, in the destitute harbors of my soul, have rushed out and became a waterfall that drops violently in the abyss of the sea of pain.
I turn my look towards the neighboring graves. Some other people that have loved, hurt and wept, are sharing this big piece of earth with you.
Why do they bury the body, as if they don't know that the soul that lies within is a bird that longs to fly? The soul is a sister of the wind, a drop of rain, a grain of sand, a sparrow that lusts for travel. It doesn't want to rest. It wants to spread its wings and become the most beautiful runner in the skies of freedom and fantasy.
They've buried your body, Eleni, in order to rid the world of your memory, to erase their guilt. As if your grave is their deliverance, a signal of their secure lives, the mark of an end whose beginning they want to push at the back of their minds.
They must really hate us, the ones we left behind, I can hear the souls all around me whisper in my inner ear, and they seem to prepare their revenge. When the bodies of the living are asleep, the spirits of the dead are wide awake, and some nights, under a full moon, they visit the former in their dreams and remind them of all those things that they long to forget.
But, what are these thoughts that time and again keep creeping into my mind as I sit here? They never passed through my mind before this very night. Perhaps… Yes, that's it; my soul is now dressed in death and thus can only look at the macabre.
Excerpt from the first novella I've published in Greek in 2000.All the sentences written in Italian are taken from Maria Polydouri, a Greek poet.
The image is taken from here