Kyriakos Charalambides [Cyprus]

 

  

International Poetry Day on the Athens Metro
 
A large crowd gathered to listen
to poetry on the Athens Metro;
all kinds of politicians and artists
even poets too – among them
a woman who without the copper
straps of Silence tumbled on.
 
At least we are compensated
by the cello and the wing that makes it
emit a passionate groan, at the same time
that the eavesdropping passengers
went up and down setting their watches
swallows of the equinox.
The moment that the light balances
with the darkness. This reveals
too the great attention with which
the best listener (vigilant eye)
absorbed it all; name: capital.
 
                                      (March 2000)
 
(Translated from the Greek by David Connolly)
 
(From “Myth and History”, Selected Poems, Nostos Books, University of Minnesota, 2010)
 
 

At his daughter’s wedding  
i 
She had three hundred acres of occupied land,
and a father in Anatolia’s depths.
 
Thankfully, she was marrying a nice lad.
 
During the holy ceremony
nobody took notice of her father.
He crept in through the narthex stealthily and stood
behind a column, taking pride.
Then he wiped off using his sleeve
his torn and humble tear.
They took him for the village idiot
and left him be.
 
Concluded are the nuptials, and may your marriage be blessed.
Wedding candy in hand, they enter
each their own car, and they are off.
 
The loving father in his turn proceeds
to the Green Line, crosses over bowing his head,
he takes once again his place in the ground.
 
(translated into English by A.K. Petrides)
 
[From “The Dome” (1989), whose overarching theme is the missing persons of the 1974 Turkish invasion.]
 
 
 
Ardana II
 
(“Ardana II” a prose poem, is included in “Meta-History”,1995. It reprises an earlier composition of the same title “Ardana”, included in Famagusta Reigning City).
 
Ardana
 
Ardana is a village on the mountain range of Pentadaktylos, eighteen miles away from the city of Famagusta and five and a half miles away from the castle of Candara. […] Andreas Maragos, a theatre director and actor, born in Ardana, inspired some elements of the composition. The idea for the poem, after all, was founded on his description of a dream he had about his village. One day he came up to me and said: “Kyriakos, you write so many poems about your home town, Famagusta. But my own thoughts go to my village, Ardana. Nobody speaks of it, poor and humble as it is. But this village is what I am yearning for, for this I suffer. So you keep on writing about Famagusta. After all some day it will be returned to you. But who will ever care about my Ardana? We shall never go back, I know it by my dreams. I think we have lost it forever.” But the situation is even more tragic as far as Famagusta is concerned, I reflected later. We are talking about a city which we used to have in our possession and which we let slip from our fingers; which we see and do not see; which, even when we take it back, will not belong to us. Except if…

 
(from “Famagusta Reigning City”, 1982)
 

(“Ardana II” describes a second dream related to Charalambides by Maragos, eleven years after the first, on July 1, 1992, when time was shrouding the refugee’s memories even further)

 
Ardana II
 
Ι could not speak to her in Turkish.
– Do you speak English?
– I can understand.
– Is this my house?
– This is your house.
And I started weeping in my sleep. That cry of farewell. But my sobs were rocking me like a cockleshell, so I woke up, Pylades.
My bed was moist — could the dream be leaking from its roof? We two can see that, know that, live that even: “Our army is gone!” Nothing remains, no ship in sight, no land, no home, my friend.
And yet the front door was the same, the narrow street the same, the well the same, the carob tree, the clay oven, the tractor, and the fold, all were the same. And I had no relation with the house. I did not recognize it. I was standing inside its yard and I was feeling so uncomfortable; I bet, if you could see me, you would break down in tears.
Inside my yard, and yet I was no longer in my home, no longer in my village — an alien, whose soul just could not rest in peace.
– Τί φῄς;[i] Outside your house and you couldn’t even recognize it, is that true?
–  It was no longer mine; it was not. The house I was born in, Pylades! I even asked her: “Madam, is this the house I was born in?”[ii] And the Turkish woman told me: “Yes, this is it.”
What a mystery! How did she know this was the house, where I first saw the light of day, how could she be so certain?
 
[i] “What are you saying?”
[ii] English in the original. 
 
(translated into English by A.K. Petrides)
 
(From “Meta-History”, 1995)
 
 

 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Kyriakos Charalambides was born in Cyprus in 1940. He studied History and Archaeology at the University of Athens. He has published eighteen books of poetry, three volumes of essays and he translated Romanos the Melodist. His books “The Vase With Designs” (1973), “Achaeans’ Shore” (1977), “Famagusta Reigning City” (1982), “Snail and Moon” (2019) awarded the Cyprus State Prize for Poetry, “Dome” (1989), awarded the Athens Academy Prize, “Meta-History” (1995), awarded the Greek State Prize for Poetry. He was also been awarded the Hellenic Society of Literary Translators Prize for his translation of three hymns by Romanos the Melodist, the Letters Excellence Award of the Republic of Cyprus, the International Cavafy Award as well as the Costas and Eleni Ouranis Prize of the Athens Academy for his entire poetic oeuvre. He is a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens and a founding member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences and Letters. He received an Honorary Phd from the University of Athens, the University of Salonica, the University of Aegean and the University of Cyprus. Many of his books have been translated in English, French, Spanish, German, Swedish, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Romanian and Albanian.
 
(Photo by Rissos Harissis)

 

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