My Lord what doesn't await us still.
I am sitting here and sitting.
It's raining without raining
as when a shadow
returns a body to us.
I am sitting here and sitting.
Myself here, my heart opposite
and further away
my weary relationship with it.
So we seem many
each time emptiness counts our heads.
The empty room is blowing.
I hold tight onto the way I have
of being swept away.
I have no news of you.
Your photograph stationary.
You stare as if approaching
you smile like no.
Dried flowers at the side
repeat to you ceaselessly
their un-holdable name semprevives
semprevives - everlasting, everlasting
so you don't forget what you are not.
Time asks me
exactly where by I want it to pass
exactly how I spell my name
shiver or shrivel.
Such amusements.
No end knows any spelling.
I have no news of you.
Your photograph stationary.
As if it's raining without raining.
As shadow returns to me the body.
And as we will meet again one day
up there.
At some overgrown sparseness
with shady un-expectations
and evergreen un-collisions.
The interpretation of the ferocious
silence that we will experience
- an advanced form of the intense
intoxication that an encounter causes
down here - will be performed by a void.
And we will be overtaken then
by a passionate un-recognition
- an advanced form of the embrace
that the encounter employs down here.
Yes we will meet. Un-breathily, secretively
from the attraction. In a downpour
of a heavy lack of gravity. At some
excursion perhaps of the infinite to ad infinitum;
at the ceremony for awarding losses to the known,
for its great contribution to the un-known;
invited to a destination's starlight,
to cessations' frolics for dissolving
causes and of farewell skies'
former great meanings.
Except that this companionship of distances
will be a bit sulky, un-cheerful
even if nothingness finds cheer from nothing.
Perhaps because the soul of the company will be absent.
The flesh.
I shout to the ash
to disarm me.
I call upon the ash
by its code name: Everything.
Ι assume you meet up often
yourself and the death of that dream.
My last-born dream.
Of all I had the most prudent.
Un-turbid, gentle, understanding.
And sure not very dreamy,
though neither cheaply subdued,
not every street's white sheets.
A very thrifty dream,
in intensity and errors.
Of the dreams I raised
the one most sympathetic to me: not to
grow older alone.
I assume you meet up often
yourself and its death.
Give it my regards, tell it to come
along when we meet
there, at the losses' awards ceremony.
Love me as long as you don't live.
Yes yes the impossible is enough for me.
I was loved by it another time as well.
Love me as long as you don't live.
Because I have no news from you.
And heaven forbid that the absurd should show
no signs of life.
---------------------------------------------
Personal notes:
This poem was published as part of the collection 'Farewell never' (1988).
The poem is longer than most of Kiki Dimoula's poems. It is the first poem in the collection published after her husband's loss. It is hard not to read this poem as a direct reference to this loss and the anguish of outliving a life partner. However, the poem alludes to broader themes about relations between individuals, human mortality, and the perceived afterlife.
The poem includes repetitions of words and sentences (a technique found also in a few other poems by Dimoula), perhaps to emphasise the recurrence and persistence of the feelings associated with the state she found herself in - having to live the rest of her life alone, without her partner. These repetitions make her sound trapped and tired.
She maintains an existential mood, throughout the poem. She expresses anger, bitterness, mockery, and even weariness about her partner's mortality (and perhaps her own mortality as well). She ridicules any suggestion that there is an after life. For the poet, such a premise is absurd and empty of any significance or meaning.
The poem's title originates from a word that is used mostly as an adjective (the 'unexpected'). However, the poet uses it here as a noun (in plural tense). She draws attention to this strange word by choosing to 'elevate' it to a more 'solid' part of speech and by doing so, allowing it to have a plural tense. This provokes some initial questions: What was she expecting(or looking forward to) and why is she not expecting it anymore?
The poem provides possible answers to these questions. She was expecting not to grow old alone, but now she will have to. She is not expecting to meet her partner again, in any form of afterlife.
Dimoula introduces the poem by inverting a popular Greek saying: 'My Lord, what awaits us still'. In its popular use, this saying is used to express grief rather than joy (for anticipating bad things rather than good things in one's life, especially after something unpleasant has happened). The saying suggests also that things to come (in one's life) are at the Lord's mercy. Dimoula uses this saying to emphasise the poem's focal point: the loss of a beloved person. She writes: 'My Lord, what doesn't await us still', suggesting that she is experiencing a state where there are not a lot of things to expect/look forward to, not even in the afterlife. It's interesting that despite the use of a contraction the saying still reads as a lament - perhaps drawing attention to the inevitability of the poet's situation and the desperation inherited in it.
Dimoula uses a similar technique in the last verse. She adds a contraction to a common declaration of love and devotion (from 'Love me as long as you live' to 'Love me as long as you don't live'). The absurdity of this statement accentuates the poet's feelings and desperation. She is now left with the absurd, and she is willing to accept it as her new reality, in the same way, she accepted her old reality - being loved. By this, she suggests that the existence of love, and possibly human relationships or even life in general, might be as absurd as its/their loss.
I am sitting here and sitting.
It's raining without raining
as when a shadow
returns a body to us.
I am sitting here and sitting.
Myself here, my heart opposite
and further away
my weary relationship with it.
So we seem many
each time emptiness counts our heads.
The empty room is blowing.
I hold tight onto the way I have
of being swept away.
I have no news of you.
Your photograph stationary.
You stare as if approaching
you smile like no.
Dried flowers at the side
repeat to you ceaselessly
their un-holdable name semprevives
semprevives - everlasting, everlasting
so you don't forget what you are not.
Time asks me
exactly where by I want it to pass
exactly how I spell my name
shiver or shrivel.
Such amusements.
No end knows any spelling.
I have no news of you.
Your photograph stationary.
As if it's raining without raining.
As shadow returns to me the body.
And as we will meet again one day
up there.
At some overgrown sparseness
with shady un-expectations
and evergreen un-collisions.
The interpretation of the ferocious
silence that we will experience
- an advanced form of the intense
intoxication that an encounter causes
down here - will be performed by a void.
And we will be overtaken then
by a passionate un-recognition
- an advanced form of the embrace
that the encounter employs down here.
Yes we will meet. Un-breathily, secretively
from the attraction. In a downpour
of a heavy lack of gravity. At some
excursion perhaps of the infinite to ad infinitum;
at the ceremony for awarding losses to the known,
for its great contribution to the un-known;
invited to a destination's starlight,
to cessations' frolics for dissolving
causes and of farewell skies'
former great meanings.
Except that this companionship of distances
will be a bit sulky, un-cheerful
even if nothingness finds cheer from nothing.
Perhaps because the soul of the company will be absent.
The flesh.
I shout to the ash
to disarm me.
I call upon the ash
by its code name: Everything.
Ι assume you meet up often
yourself and the death of that dream.
My last-born dream.
Of all I had the most prudent.
Un-turbid, gentle, understanding.
And sure not very dreamy,
though neither cheaply subdued,
not every street's white sheets.
A very thrifty dream,
in intensity and errors.
Of the dreams I raised
the one most sympathetic to me: not to
grow older alone.
I assume you meet up often
yourself and its death.
Give it my regards, tell it to come
along when we meet
there, at the losses' awards ceremony.
Love me as long as you don't live.
Yes yes the impossible is enough for me.
I was loved by it another time as well.
Love me as long as you don't live.
Because I have no news from you.
And heaven forbid that the absurd should show
no signs of life.
---------------------------------------------
Personal notes:
This poem was published as part of the collection 'Farewell never' (1988).
The poem is longer than most of Kiki Dimoula's poems. It is the first poem in the collection published after her husband's loss. It is hard not to read this poem as a direct reference to this loss and the anguish of outliving a life partner. However, the poem alludes to broader themes about relations between individuals, human mortality, and the perceived afterlife.
The poem includes repetitions of words and sentences (a technique found also in a few other poems by Dimoula), perhaps to emphasise the recurrence and persistence of the feelings associated with the state she found herself in - having to live the rest of her life alone, without her partner. These repetitions make her sound trapped and tired.
She maintains an existential mood, throughout the poem. She expresses anger, bitterness, mockery, and even weariness about her partner's mortality (and perhaps her own mortality as well). She ridicules any suggestion that there is an after life. For the poet, such a premise is absurd and empty of any significance or meaning.
The poem's title originates from a word that is used mostly as an adjective (the 'unexpected'). However, the poet uses it here as a noun (in plural tense). She draws attention to this strange word by choosing to 'elevate' it to a more 'solid' part of speech and by doing so, allowing it to have a plural tense. This provokes some initial questions: What was she expecting(or looking forward to) and why is she not expecting it anymore?
The poem provides possible answers to these questions. She was expecting not to grow old alone, but now she will have to. She is not expecting to meet her partner again, in any form of afterlife.
Dimoula introduces the poem by inverting a popular Greek saying: 'My Lord, what awaits us still'. In its popular use, this saying is used to express grief rather than joy (for anticipating bad things rather than good things in one's life, especially after something unpleasant has happened). The saying suggests also that things to come (in one's life) are at the Lord's mercy. Dimoula uses this saying to emphasise the poem's focal point: the loss of a beloved person. She writes: 'My Lord, what doesn't await us still', suggesting that she is experiencing a state where there are not a lot of things to expect/look forward to, not even in the afterlife. It's interesting that despite the use of a contraction the saying still reads as a lament - perhaps drawing attention to the inevitability of the poet's situation and the desperation inherited in it.
Dimoula uses a similar technique in the last verse. She adds a contraction to a common declaration of love and devotion (from 'Love me as long as you live' to 'Love me as long as you don't live'). The absurdity of this statement accentuates the poet's feelings and desperation. She is now left with the absurd, and she is willing to accept it as her new reality, in the same way, she accepted her old reality - being loved. By this, she suggests that the existence of love, and possibly human relationships or even life in general, might be as absurd as its/their loss.
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