THE LIFE AND DEATH OF POETS
Sinope
is the name
? the official one ?
of the “Cloud-City”
also called “City of Fires”
which
lies somewhere over
in
South America
this watery
and most likely Hellenistic
city
hangs in the skies
like a baton
and is placed with certainty
by the experts
at times exactly in the middle
of a straight line
drawn between Maracaibo
and Valparaíso
in Chile
and at others
between Maracaibo again
and
Elbassan
there
as the houses are all made of fires
the inhabitants live in the flames
are burned constantly
and reborn constantly
from their ashes
unaltered like
the phoenix
bird
there in this very place
was born ? as is well-known ?
the great Greek poet of
antiquity
Alector
during the course of excavations
there was found among the ruins
a strange poem? from that time ?
written on ordinary paper
with alternate
iron and bronze joints
and ink from tears
the said poem was as follows:
“follow the firs of Fatius
to see the swimmer?s swirl”
because of the presence of the word
“swimmer”
the poem was attributed
? initially ?
to the great
Isidore Ducasse*
who happened to originate from
those
parts
after ? however ? due consideration
it was attributed finally
? and now
irrevocably ?
to some woman called
Fair Lady
probably better known by
her foreign
name
Bella donna
Nikos Engonopoulos (1907-1985) wasa pioneer of surrealism in Greece. He belonged to a group of poets (the famous ‘generation of the 1930s’ that included among its ranks the Nobel Prize poets George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis) who through their poetry were able to change the face of the greek poetry . His long poem ‘Bolivar’ is not only his best-known work but also one of the most significant poems of Modern Greek literature.
Club Of Poetry 