For you, a poem and a photo from my travel, which will continue for a few more days. Thank you for reading.
Eleusinian – Poem by Gabriela Marie Milton
Beneath the silence of the heated rocks, Demeter harvests her lost tears, Tonight, you will be hers, my dear, Your body arting stones and souls
The ears of the corn will grow in silence, Secrets of red sweetened lips Falling to your knees You’ll drink from my cupped palms The supplication prayers Of those you’ve never met
Unknowing who I am, The goddess’s veil will fall— Revealing all that once was hidden, Blooms of blushed and bluish mornings That once were sacred and now sleep Inside the drunken silence of museums
In everyone’s life there are unforgettable moments filled with magic and light on which our names are engraved forever. I lived one of these moments when Vasiliki Petroudi sent me two of my poems she translated into Greek.
Vasiliki Petroudi lives in Greece. Greece is the land where the ancients took every characteristic of the human soul and intellect and made it into a god. A land where we are not assisting to a simple typonomy of name-place. We are assisting to an associative relationship between us and the projection of us into gods; a projection that for the ancients constituted reality. They embedded it into their daily lives; into weddings and funerals, into the cooking of the meals and into mathematical equations.
Every look at the Parthenon transforms the group image of gods into individual psychology. Our beginning and our end are born at the intersection of the Greek interpretations of notions such as eros, beauty, power, and introspection. Look into a mirror and you will see Greece even if you’ve never visited it.
My favorite novelist – Lawrence Durrell – once wrote:
Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder—the discovery of yourself.
Vasiliki Petroudi is a wonderful Greek poet who, among other things, translates poetry from English into Greek. She is working on an incredible project that Literary Revelations will present in June. Until then you can read more about Vasiliki HERE.
I am humbled beyond words that Vasiliki translated two of my English poems into Greek. These translations are part of the project she is working on.
Vasiliki, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Below you can find my English poems and Vasiliki’s translations.
Samos, perhaps Crete by Gabriela Marie Milton
[included in Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020]
on the barren shore you play your mandolin I conjugate “to leave” in the voice of trees the air reverberates expressions of old gods the space changes its mind maybe it is Samos, perhaps it is just Crete traces of death, glimpses of the future your thoughts are cut in marble scratches turn to yellow delineations, conquerors of islands the shore melts in the waters your eyes tell prophesies the time changes its mind perhaps it was just Samos, maybe it was Crete the dying mandolin, the smell of ripened olives an unmade wooden bed solemnity, delirium the names of I, You We
The Easter of Roses by Gabriela Marie Milton
[included in Women: Splendor and Sorrow I: Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021]
my love you know that spring will come peaches will grow on one side of the moon injured lambs will scream on the other taste of strawberries my hair freshly cut possessed by new ghosts will look for each other steps on the asphalt heard from cafes the baptism of rain and thin yellow candles a verse from Seferis hangs on your lips the Easter of Roses with its cold morning showers never to sin your hands nailed in white marble the rode of your anchor my love it’s spring it’s me free your hands from the marble
