Anna Griva [Greece]

 

Maria and the lily
 
The lily was black.
 
And the angel adorned with heavy armor.
Whose words sounded a declaration of war.
This would be the battlefield – for attack
His gaze directed, beyond the window
into the dancing desert
 
listening from the street, the womens' voices and
laughter. Echoing from –
as billowing white sheets
waved high on rooftops.
 
The flow of everything impeded nothing
And for a while, she forgot the angel
which called on her to stand for all that she stood
Her stance, here nor there, would matter not
 
Yet she knew the battle would rage
festering under skin ravaging a'waste
 
crimson deep like the apple
while the worm devours – savors
a lesser creature without name
burrowing yet darkening, beauty's face.
 
(From “The Lost Goddess”, 2023)
 
(translated by Ginger F. Zaimis)
 
 
 
 
A N N A
 
                                    Sant' Anna la Madonna
      il Bambino e san Giovannino (1501-1505)
 
They represent you as a crone
With crinkled eyes, blurred:
Mother of mothers
 
– how else? –
concieving entire worlds,
 
Alas Leonardo succumbs not
to rumours
He sees your lush lips
cheeks that radiate
endless youth: Mother
of mothers
 
– how else? –
eternal matriarch ageless
and I on behalf of your child.
 
With the anagramic letters A N N A
– the merciless comings and goings
between beginnings and endings –
clasped
by the chain of dreams like stone
skimming water
that journeys to depths
of estuary's source
again and again.
 
And you look back at me
always young
always old
ever in front of me, you
my mirror and
my name.
 
(from “The Lost Goddess”, 2023)
 
(translated by Ginger F. Zaimis)

 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
* Anna Griva is a Greek poet, fiction writer, scholar, and translator. She studied Philology in Athens and Italian Literature in Rome and holds a PhD in Italian Renaissance Literature. Her academic and literary work move between poetry, comparative literature, mythology, philosophy, and translation. She is the author of multiple poetry collections, prose works, studies, and translations. Her poetry collection “The Lost Goddess” (Melani, 2023) received the Greek State Prize for Poetry, while her earlier collection “Demons” (Melani, 2020) was honored with an award from the Academy of Athens. Her work is characterized by the distinctive synthesis of mythic imagination, philosophical inquiry, feminist re-readings of historical and religious figures, and lyrical intensity. Her short story collection “The Animal Gods” (Kichli, 2021) explores the porous boundaries between the human and nonhuman worlds through twenty-one stories. Griva has also published the historical novels “Exiled Queens” (Melani, 2021), “The Greek Slave” (Melani, 2022) and “The Alchemist” (Melani, 2026 – First Prize for Fiction awarded by the Club for Unesco Art, Literature and Science of Greece), as well as, scholarly and essayistic works on Sappho, Plato, Renaissance literature, and Byzantine tradition. She has translated Italian literature into Greek, including poetry from the Italian Renaissance; her translation work has been recognised by the Italian Institute of Athens. Her work has been translated into several languages and published in journals, anthologies, and literary venues outside Greece. Her personal website: www.epistemeacademy.org/annagriva
 
(Photo by Sissy Morfi)