του Γιάννη Γκούμα
Love empty beach.
Violet twilight.
Verdant sea.
Waves. Sand.
Black your head
emerged,
holding a white smile
in its teeth.
*
I count the fingers on my right hand
and find them to be five. I count the fingers
on both my hands and find them to be ten.
I count fingers and toes and find them to be twenty.
Thirty-two the teeth. My senses
five. Your passion and my love for you
have admittedly left me sound.
I’m not counting the drinks; I’m not counting the fags.
*
In the long run, it’s real the pain
I feel for your spurious
love.
*
Aim my arrows at you,
as the wind steers the waves.
Summer etesian
that irks and worries you,
because you lose a day’s wages,
girl at the seaside ouzo bar,
my heart’s cashier.
*
Wouldn’t it be funny
if my pain was fake
and your love true?
*
… and if, for real pain,
an inexistent love would suffice?
*
I want you to know
that if then I hadn’t truly
loved you, now I truly hurt.
*
Pain starts once we forget
the wound. There’s no outlet
for the bullet. Its opening has
healed and closed.
Pain is locked in.
You cannot spot it
in organs, tissues and cells.
Nothing gives it away.
Dispersed and uncaught,
it stands out like joy. Pain,
my love, grows when
great, joy that enthrals.
Only he who has truly loved
can fall in love again.
*
I don’t care whose shoelaces
you undo, whose chest
you fondle, playing with his shirt
and buttons. I don’t care
whose trousers you unzip
and unbuckle his belt. To whom
you give a pedicure,
tell me.
*
I don’t pretend to be a victim,
despite the literary advantages
that such an attitude
provides. I shall adopt
the common acceptance, the equally
shared mistake,
once we’ve ceased
partaking of time:
mortals’ only feasible happiness.
What a pity that I still remember!
*
How do things start?
How do they unfold and how
false are they? When you cut
your veins, wanting to
steep the world in blood,
it’s too bad that you’ll spatter blood
only on the bathroom tiles!
*
Why does Love, from a proper noun,
end up an abstract substantive?
Ο ποιητής και μεταφραστής Γιάννης Γκούμας μεταφράζει ποιήματα από τη συλλογή του Σωτήρη Παστάκα "Νήσος Χίος" (Πλανόδιον, 2002).
