*This and one subsequent passage are quoted, in my translation, from Stefanidis’s introduction to a collection of sketches from his time in exile, Zografiki stin exoria [Painting in exile] (Athens: Sighroni Epohi, 1988).
DIARY OF EXILE I
October 27, 1948
There are so many thorns here –
brown thorns, yellow thorns
all along the length of the day, even into sleep.
When the nights jump the barbed wire
they leave tattered strips of skirt behind.
The words we once found beautiful
faded like an old man’s vest in a trunk
like a sunset darkened on the windowpanes.
People here walk with their hands in their pockets
or might gesture as if swatting a fly
that returns again and again to the same place
on the rim of an empty glass or just inside
a spot as indefinite and persistent
as their refusal to acknowledge it.
October 29
We sleep only a little; — it’s not enough.
All night the exiles snore –
tired boys, so tired.
Outside are the stars — enormous stars
shaven-headed stars whose hair sprouts wild
as from the head of St. John the Baptist
or our own Panayiotis.
There are toads in the mint, too.
In the morning a rosy sun hits us smack in the face
reflected by the sea in the most ordinary way
like those cheap paintings they sell on the steps of the Arsakeios School
and it’s strange that we actually like this kind of sun.
Alone, in pairs, often in groups
we stop in the yard or on the hill to look at it.
And that sun hits us hard in the face
like a barefoot villager beating his almond trees
to bring down the last of the nuts.
Then we lower our eyes, look at our shoes,
look at the dirt. Nothing has fallen.
October 29
Among the thorns and fallen red leaves
we found the naked head of a donkey –
perhaps the head of summer
left there on the wet stones
and around it some tiny blue flowers
whose name we don’t know.
If someone calls out from behind the fence
his voice sinks quickly into the soil
like a paper cone full of raisins.
In the evening we hear them off in the hills
changing the flat tire of the moon.
Later things find their rightful places again
as in the yard you happen to find
a brown button from your coat — and you know:
it’s nothing like the buttons on the costumes
of summertime actors — no, not at all –
a perfectly ordinary button you’ll have to sew back onto your coat
with that awkward, polite care
of the eternal apprentice.
November 1
The mist has black wings like jackdaws
it has no eyes at all
its blindness gropes our eyes our pockets
like an old fortuneteller stroking our palm.
We can’t hide anything anymore.
Here things turn inside-out
like a dirty sock we take off before sleep
and our feet are naked and our faces too.
Day by day we now speak in the singular.
Every shadow has the shape of remember
but the shadow of the mother’s unseen hand
takes the shape of every voice that doesn’t resist you
it becomes the mug, the coffee, a bit of bread, the thermometer
even the shaver beside the bowl in the little mirror.
There are two lamps in the room.
We shine the glass with newspapers
you one, me the other — we’re on duty today.
Our movements are nearly identical.
We don’t look at one another.
We enjoy this similarity.
We look out the window at a sky lost in mist.
So all things, then, have the look of forever.
November 2
Today Mitsos got a letter from Skopelos.
Antigone writes: “The island autumn
has filled with little yellow lilies.
Poor Mitsos,” she says, “you won’t remember those lilies at all;
you never knew a thing about botany.”
Mitsos
wiped his glasses, read the letter again. At his side
the pharmacology textbook lay forgotten on the rocks.
Mitsos smiles. He puts his glasses back on. He doesn’t wipe them.
I want to write Mitsos a poem
not with words
but with yellow lilies.
November 3
If we try to open a door
the wind shuts it.
And so, locked out
each of us grasps his keys
though the most we have is a pitcher
though none of us has a home.
Today I don’t know how to speak.
Today I speak in the first person.
When one of your own hits you it’s twice as bitter.
A bus passed by this afternoon.
A stranger greeted me in the fields.
I wanted to thank him. I didn’t speak.
I forgot to look at the clouds. Yes, the almond trees
turned a brownish-purple — it must be because fall is here
and the flies have multiplied; they sit on the page where I write.
And what if they did turn brownish-purple? Ants
have their house of dirt — it’s warm in there.
I don’t fit into my voice. My feet
stick out. I’m cold. And they’re watching me.
I must have done something very wrong.
November 3
Panousis is wearing a long overcoat.
A soldier gave it to him.
They dyed it black in his village cauldron.
Now it’s green — not even green.
In his pockets he has
five kernels of corn and two leaves of tobacco
and even the gaze of his cow. Panousis
wraps himself in a thick blanket. The blanket
is red and white. And Panousis’s sleep
is colored by that blanket. He always sleeps in
his cap, shoes and pants.
If he took off his boots, surely a bird
would lay its eggs in there
and then Panousis would have nowhere to put his feet.
His sleep every afternoon
is like the oak’s shade over the water.
Now he has to save up
another five kernels of corn for the game of nines
until his moustache grows back and he goes home to his village.
November 4
Lots of things give us trouble. Lots.
We have to wash our plates, our clothes
carry water from the spring in big pitchers
sweep the room two or three times a day
darn the occasional sock, darn our words –
Yesterday’s conversations soon get holes
faces change as you look at them
and perhaps you’re changing too — because looking at your hands
you realize they’ve gotten used to these tasks
to these days, these sheets
they know the wood of the table they know the lamp
they move in the same way with greater certainty
they are never surprised. The fire
needs stirring, it’s dying down –