Rickety nights
and sleepy stars
at Koumoundouros square
Several darknesses form a line dance at Euripides street
as the houses' plaster wreaths
lose their details and start searching for them
letting out a mysterious 'oh' that sighs.
The flower pots heat up on the balconies,
while further inside dreams sleep naked.
Somewhere there and unspecified,
a separation
snores chantingly and innocently.
At the rooftops
a summer predisposition for sadness
sets up for sleep.
For you, all of these
one balcony,
you sit and teach the stars' positions.
You point first tο Ursa Major
then the minor one
and then slide down to the North Star.
Your finger knows well
the twinkle's barren line.
It enters carefully into the light's coves, avoiding
the dryness of the darkness.
It steps aside wherever it meets a falling star,
lets the fall go first.
It starts again,
navigates closely those tiny,
almost sank at the very far,
cherished stars,
which have a disrupted presence -
loneliness' lighthouses.
At those sank stars
your finger stumbles,
loads up the distance from the one
and takes it to the other.
It starts again,
points out, sails, resembles
a sky ship's mast
taking for a stroll God's puzzlement:
how do we humans survive?
How do we survive
saying time has passed.
At Piraeus street a rooster strains
to say it dawns.
At Euripides street
the houses' plaster wreaths
find their details:
plaster flowers,
plaster abstract cupids,
then a whole part of the design is missing,
we don't know what happened,
and the plaster flowers appear again,
the plaster cupids
laugh their hearts out
with this repetition.
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Personal notes:
This poem was published as part of the collection 'The little of the world' (1971).
Here, Dimoula revisits her favourite subjects (love, loss and loneliness) over a hot night in one of Athens' old neighbourhoods.
The choice of the location, the tone of the poem, and the direct address to a second person suggest this is a personal poem, possibly describing the state of the poet's relationship with an intimate other.
The first stanza reveals the location and time of narration: the Psirri neighbourhood in central Athens during late night. It is unclear whether the poet is physically or mentally present at the location, but the description of the houses and stars suggests the poet is in physical or mental fatigue.
The second stanza describes a physical or mental wander through one of Psirri's main streets. It is pitch dark, so the poet can't see the plaster decorations on the houses - these are later revealed to be symbolic of love and affection.
The third stanza suggests a possible cause for the poet's fatigue and inability to experience affection - a mental or physical separation from her partner.
The next four stanzas describe a 'lesson' given by the poet herself or the poet's partner (it is unclear whether the second person addressed is herself or her partner). The subjects of this 'lesson' are the inevitable distance between lovers, the inevitable loss of one's partner, and the inherent loneliness in humans. These subjects are delivered via a tour of the night sky and a star's symbolic singularity, distance and eventual fall.
This 'lesson' is explicitly put in spoken words in the seventh stanza: 'time has passed', meaning there is an end to everything. This hard 'lesson' generates God's puzzlement, which stresses the enormity of its impact on humans and stresses also human strength and resilience. Our own creator is amazed by our survival when having to go through this 'lesson'.
The last two lines of the seventh stanza introduce a change in the poem: the sun is rising.
As suggested by the last stanza, although the day brings the light, it fails to appease the poet's mood and situation. The wreath's design, symbolic here of love and affection, is actually missing whole parts, a situation repeated in all of the houses' plaster decorations. The poet suggests here that her experience (the 'lesson') can be recurring and universal.
[In the fifth stanza, Dimoula refers to a falling star. She refers also to a falling star in her poem 'On occasion' ('Departures' sound' 2001), which shares a similar theme and mood with 'God's puzzlement'.]
