dinos, i will try to describe
the feelings you have when you drink ouzo
you feel beautiful even if you are not
you are in the place you love to be even if you are in prison
you feel in love with everybody even if you don’t love anyone
you smile
and do ha ha ha all the time
you can do strange things
lie down in the middle of a road
or call the man that you are in love with
at midnight, to say to him
vre bountala
i am in love with you
mmmmmmm
what else
i can cry also because i saw a man and a woman
walking on the road and he
has her hand in his hand and
i feel like sofia loren…
yes, but lilia, the taste is too sweet
like vodka, through a licorice straw
metaxa, greek cognac
that is what a man drinks!
when I drink metaxa
a mist rolls in from the sea
i hear bouzouki and baglamas
even here, in cincinnati, i hear them
and i want to be like george foundas
i want to grab melina mercouri by the hair and waist
and tell her that she is a fool –
and that she is mine!
but there is no melina, and i am not foundas
and there’s no pebbled beach,
at least, not in cincinnati
forget the sweet taste, ksadelfe mou
it is not the taste, but the feeling
you talk of mists and movie stars
and a beach you saw fifty years ago
let me tell you about ouzo
and perhaps you will learn something
when i’m home after a tiring day,
in the garden among my flowers and trees,
i cut a tomato in four pieces
and take a bottle of ouzo and go to my veranda.
i can see the whole gulf of evia, i can hear the birds
and feel the fresh air as it whispers through blue flowers,
my dog is sitting next to me, and
i can see the sheep walking on the hillside
with bells ringing around their necks,
as the water cascades among the rocks to the sea
and the only thing i want is another glass of ouzo
i understand what you’re saying, lilia
but it’s different here
i live on hot asphalt and concrete
and when i look out my window
there’s a brick wall, painted gray
and no amount of ouzo, or metaxa
for that matter,
can breathe life into a corpse
shame on you, dinos
you call yourself a poet
you claim to be an educated man
but you are like theseus, lost
without his ball of string, confused
you don’t need metaxa,
you need ariadne to come to your rescue,
tonight, i will be your ariadne,
i will show you the way, ksadelfe
let me explain to you what you should already know
listen, when I have my grandson in my arms
and the little prince is smiling just for me
i watch as he closes his eyes to dream
and i take a sip of ouzo from the glass
beside me, and the memories, dinos
the memories, they bob around in my head
like the ice cubes in my glass, how long ago
when my first daughter was born, the feelings
when she smiled at me for the first time
and i take another sip, and i remember
my second daughter going to school
in her yellow raincoat, waving
at me as i watched, worried
like we all worry, if she will be alright
if she will make friends, if she will be ok
how I try, all these years, to offer to her
all that a mother can offer and now what?
am i old, or just older?
am i still lilia,
or just a crazy grandmother?
oh ariadne!
we’ve gone from one labyrinth to another
i’m beginning to like this ouzo
how it gets cloudy as it cascades among the ice cubes
like a mist rolling in from the sea
by Lilia and Constantine Pantazonis
conversation with lilia
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constantine
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