Well, thank you, Sheila. I've been trying to comb that one';s hair and
straighten its jacket for nearly 20 years. I've sent it to my friend and
see what he says to it and to his unwarranted exposure to this discussion
list.
Glad I've done it now... before....
Angela Merkel turns up at the Greek border.
Name?
Merkel
Occupation?
No, just a short visit
A pity my correctly spelt Greek word did not survive but that was pushing
my luck
Anyway, thank you again for saying that
L
On 16 June 2015 at 18:07, Sheila Murphy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Utterly compelling, Lawrence. Very strong and draws one in completely.
> Thank you. Sheila
>
> On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > [This should do it]
> >
> >
> > Richard Kessling, Melbourne in Australia
> >
> > I have my shades on. A quarter past two.
> > P.M. I've eaten a large spinach pie.
> > It cost me little and includes napkins
> > and a plastic bag which I shall fill with figs
> > on Tuesday morning. An ant grabs fragments.
> >
> > The plate is borrowed from my landlady.
> >
> > She taught me several words of Greek for plate
> > as well as for the knife. That's ???????.
> > It's said "Ma Carey" with the stress on care.
> > Sounds like a film.
> > Kessling, it's very hot;
> > my mind is wandering and I'm following.
> > A man, a Greek, is digging a long hole
> > in the street below, but I don't know why.
> > He doesn't sweat. His wife removes his hat,
> > drops it in a bucket and puts it back
> > on him. Cool water streams over his face.
> > She helps to break large stones with a hammer,
> > talking. Extremely attractive. She bends
> > beautifully, bare-footed, trousers cut knee length.
> > I wish that she loved me and I was rich.
> > I have my shades on but it's not enough.
> > The ant is almost at the balcony.
> > It can't escape. The floor's really well-sealed.
> > This morning I evicted the spider
> > from my shoes. He's been there - perhaps it's she -
> > for five days, hunting from beside the heels.
> > It was desperate to run but had no shade.
> > She has powerful legs, that woman.
> > Gets down in the hole now, helping him, talking,
> > about whatever's down there. Water pipes?
> > Something of concern.
> > I have my shades on.
> >
> > How are you, you inoperable fart?
> > The Greek for fart is not in my dictionary,
> > not even under "Doctor-General".
> >
> > Two forty five: good poetry takes time.
> > Across the street, two teenage girls stand tense,
> > balconied in strident loud pop music;
> > finger tips flicker, keeping time, heads nod;
> > "I want... I want... I want..." Perhaps "I wish..."
> > I fail to hear the list of the desires
> > or else don't understand. Overlapping
> > as small streams merge fleet pulses in a tide;
> > an older song, on a peculiar scale,
> > from a take away, somehow more dominant
> > in its undercurrent, unsynched to the
> > insistent Western chant
> > What is the matter?
> > much repeated.
> > Yes.
> > What is the matter?
> >
> > I've written far too long. I'm tired out. Much as I like to hear my
> voice,
> > I'm off.
> >
> > *
> >
> > Too many beers for lunch. Hours wasted.
> > People volunteer and I want the company.
> > I take what I am offered; for my soul,
> > of course. Then a long talk in the garden,
> > all in my own present tense upside down Greek,
> > that I enjoyed, though exhausting. One thing:
> > tomorrow night, up in the hills, free goat,
> > music all night.
> > Now I'm up; the sky's showing off
> > what can be achieved with indirect sun.
> > It would take some painting! Hunting birds out.
> > I wonder if dusk clarifies for them
> > perspective as it does for us. Best clothes
> > are being shown off below. A lot of Greek.
> > An American has just said "squid" for "hi".
> > I want a walk. I've had enough of this
> > so “squid”.
> >
> > *
> >
> > Morning. Draught German lager.
> > I've left the balcony. I'm in the pub.
> > Eighteen hours have passed - quite good hours
> > and I'm feeling slightly paraplegic.
> > A man or a woman shaped like an egg
> > plods down to the water's edge, legs floppy,
> > guts floppy, hat floppy; an octopus
> > clutched in a cut off hand pops up, violent,
> > from behind the wall of the taverna
> > wop - rather it disappears and then goes wop!
> > If I stood now I'd see the hand's body.
> > An army truck goes past. Wide diesel creaks.
> > The deaf shepherd walks the sea's edge, his dog
> > slightly ahead, both all-seeing. The egg's
> > a woman! immersed now, a wet radish
> > in a fading white hat in a blue sea talking
> > with a woman's voice. To my left, a huge
> > strongish man in a t-shirt stretched round him
> > "Start with Gramosite" drinks beer; grey curly hair
> > dappled by little specks of bent sunlight
> > from the vine lauding over him it seems
> > boughs raised, as they've been trained, as Victory
> > is anthropomorphised as Capa's -
> > is it Capa? picture of the dying
> > soldier in the Spanish Civil War. More
> > assertive than the hands up of the dead
> > entering eternal fire; and more confident!
> > But gestures often say two different things
> > as smiles indicate intending murder
> > as well as love and fear; or confusion.
> > Stars flash in the rising tide, breaking open dark.
> > From my polarising shades, the sea shines;
> > nothing's amiss; nothing can be wrong;
> > as Jarman interviewed was positive,
> > urbane, intense, resistant to darkness.
> > My second sip. A duck comes in the bar
> > and says "AGG" to the owner, both sitting;
> > he shooes at it; his grand-daughter falls back
> > wards over a plastic chair which falls on
> > her as his wife jumps exclaiming rushing;
> > the duck gains ground, the child begins to cry
> > until silenced by hugs; the duck says "quack"
> > but I ignore it, gulping my cool beer;
> > the radio fanfares: "Now supermarkets."
> > Male voice. Supermarkets blah blah
> > for several minutes. Supermarkets.
> > Female voice. Yes, supermarkets. Blah
> > and blah and blah with some words that I know.
> > Supermarkets are they blah or blah-blah.
> > And so it goes until the teeming words
> > seemingly die like spawn in drying spring pools
> > or the sheet yellow under the olives,
> > Cape Sorrel, late March, eventually dead.
> > Not that you've seen that, I think. Make metaphors
> > or think of how weeds take over specimens
> > if one just stays clear. Slowly their voices
> > merged into the cicadas until I was
> > listening to a lyra and a fiddle.
> > Weeds are the finest flowers in my garden.
> > Spring's a random time. Give me high summer's
> > wordless rooted persistence against fire.
> >
> > An hour's passed. My beer's warm. Someone
> > it sounds Anatolian blowing something.
> > An English rose is being gauche, goggled,
> > in her twenties, hat with a pretty man
> > ducking her, to the prompt of "Don't you dare!"
> > She's orange flippers. An old scratched record:
> > an unaccompanied woman, pained voice,
> > pure voice; no one hearing a song of loss;
> > my beer is done. One tenth my allowance.
> > The supermarket two come back until
> > becoming a piano voiced over.
> > I have no idea what is being said.
> >
> > A combined popping of stopping mopeds;
> > Italians, one's shorts open at his cock,
> > bang in showy and light large cigarettes;
> > they sit, each like a young cross emperor;
> > one stares at me so I stare back and win;
> > god help us. The shorts are closed to laughter.
> > I haven't seen an Italian walk. In Leros
> > I climbed to the hilltop of Xerocambos
> > and found what I believe's a Roman light
> > camouflaged as a Christian church. But the old walls,
> > a thousand years B.C., I think, were wrecked.
> > The Italian army billeted there
> > in 1912, heaped up the stones randomly.
> > Archaeological evidence pulled apart
> > because those shits had nothing else to do.
> > Folly on a British scale. Arrogance!
> > Gerondas, here, a farmhouse blown out
> > from its centre. Only the weight of its stones
> > stopped it from collapsing; on a wall
> > in the yard, possibly where it was put, a canteen
> > Wasser Wehrmacht 1943.
> >
> > All patronise the Greeks, elevating
> > Aristotle and Plato unless they say
> > that Greek civilisation's solidly
> > from Egypt. Or worse. Till they put questions
> > that cut the thrust of our advances
> > like knives in the neck of a bull.
> > Worse still, Aristotle never imagined Britain.
> > Harpoons exploding inside a whale's body.
> > Whoever took Aristotle's Politics entire?
> > He's a name to use: like Winston Churchill.
> > But I'm with the whales and bulls and doubting thought,
> > pulled like a rope as in a tug of war
> > and make myself untied.. Greece was nearly
> > socialist, could well have tipped up Stalin.
> > But, no, that's quite silly. You can't beat
> > wankers like that. You have to go round them.
> > I mean all three of the Yalta teddy bears.
> > What is important to keep full in mind
> > is the betrayal by my own country,
> > British troops shooting Greeks in Athens
> > in nineteen forty four, the war open.
> > Greeks who'd fought Fascism. They were murdered
> > because, like Berlin and Rome, London
> > was into manipulation to match
> > hypotheses they dared to call ideas,
> > a set of program declarations
> > asserted to be realistic, daft
> > as Adam Smith or Bentham. Destructive.
> > This Macedonian nonsense. Quiet
> > people led to jump forward like a dog
> > when you touch something of its it hasn't touched
> > for ages. Britain letting Bosnia go.
> > A Greek last night kicking a screaming dog.
> >
> > (1995)
> >
>
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