Here's another longish poem.
It's set in Athens, where I lived
off and on for two decades.
This probably dates from about the late '60s.
The Greek word "γιαγιά" means "grandmother,"
or can be used roughly for any old lady that one knows.
There's also a passage in Levantine French, which I'm not
going to translate for you because it
tells of very shameful doings during Lent, I believe.
Called After the Fire.
Everything changes.
Nothing does.
I'm back, the doorbell rings, my heart leaps out of habit,
but it is only Kleo, how thin, how old, trying to smile,
lips chill the fallen dusk.
She's brought a cake for tomorrow
as if tomorrows were still memorable.
We sit down in the freshly painted hall,
once used for little dinners.
The smoke cleared on no real damage yet I'd wanted changes.
Balcony glassed in, electric range,
and wrote to have them made after the fire.
Now Kleo's eyes begin to stream in earnest, tears
of joy or troubles too, I fear.
Her old mother has gone off the deep end.
From their basement window the γιαγιά, nearly 90,
hurls invective at the passing scene, teabags as well,
the water bill, an egg for emphasis.
A strange car stops outside, she cackles, "Here's the client.
Paint your face, poutána," to her daughter,
moistening with tears the shirt she irons.
Or locks her out on her return from watering
with tears my terraced garden.
I will see tomorrow the white oleander burst
from its pot in the rains.
Nor is darling Panayióti, Kleo's son, immune.
Our entire neighborhood now knows as if they hadn't years
before that he is a degenerate, a thieving faggot,
just as Kleo is a whore.
I press Kleo's cold hand and wonder what could
the poor γιαγιά have done to deserve this terrible gift
of hindsight, these visions that possessed her of a past
when Kleo really was a buxom armful
and Noti cruised the naval hospital, slim then
with teased hair.
Now he must be 40, age at which degeneration
takes too much of one's time and strength and money.
My eyes brim with past evenings in this hall--
gravy-spattered cloth, candle, minutely guttering
in the love blinded gaze.
The wall's original old fashioned colors,
cendre de rose, warm flaking ivory,
colors last seen as by that lover's ghost
stumbling downstairs wound in a sheet of flame,
are hidden now forever but not lost
beneath this quiet, sensible light gray.
Kleo goes on, "the γιαγιά's warm.
What can it mean?"
She who sat blanketed in mid-July now burns all day,
eats only sugar having ascertained poison in whatever
Kleo cooks.
"Kill me, there'll be an autopsy, poutána.
Matricide, I've seen to that."
I mention my own mother's mother's illness,
querulous temper, lucid shame.
Kleo says weeping, "But it's not the same.
There's nothing wrong according to the doctor,
just that she's old and merciless and warm."
Next day I visit them.
Red-eyed Kleo lets me in.
Beyond her bedclothes disarrayed,
the little leaden oven rosy witch
fastens her unrecognizing glare under the lightest line
that I can spin.
"It's me, γιαγιά.
Together let us plumb depths long dry."
Getting no further, though, than Panayióti's anaconda arms.
"Ah Monsieur Tzim, bon zour et bon retour!
Excuse mon déshabillé.
Toute la nuit z'ai décoré l'église pour la fête et fait l'amour,
le prêtre et moi, dans une alcove derrière la Sainte Imaze.
Tiens, z'ai un cadeau pour toi, zoli foulard qui me va pas du tout,
mais prends le donc, c'est pas volé--
ze ne suis plus voleur, seulement volaze!"
Huge, powerful, bland, he rolls his Is and Rs.
Glints of copper wreath his porcelain
brow like the old time fuses here that blow so readily.
I seem to know that crimson robe, and on his big fat feet
my slippers, ruined.
Still not to complicate affairs, remembering also
the gift of thumb-sized garnet bruises
he clasped around Aleko's throat, I beam with gratitude.
Meanwhile other translated objects one by one
keep from hiding, teapot, towel, transistor.
Upon the sideboard an old knee, scissored
from its glossy tavern scene.
I know that their arm, too, flung around my shoulder,
buckles against a ruby glass ashtray.
It strikes me now, as happily it did not the insurance company,
that Panayióti caused the fire.
Kleo's key borrowed for a rendezvous,
a cigarette left burning.
Never mind.
Life, like the bandit Somethingopoulos,
gives to others what it takes from us.
Some of those embers can't be handled yet.
I mean to ask whose feast it is today but the room brightens.
The γιαγιά shrieks my name, "It's Jimmy.
He's returned."
And with that, she returns to human form.
The snuffed out candle ends grow tall and shine,
dead flames encircle us, which cannot harm,
the table spread she croons, and I am kneeling,
pressed to her old burning frame.