Tollgate

Wake up, we are almost there.

Our final stop will be next.

We get off. 

Wash your face a little bit

use the pencil to draw your eyes so

that they are clearly understood

put that faint 'LIFE' perfume on. 

Don't think no one will be seeing you

vanity will be there to

welcome you. 

We are almost there now, get ready

have your sins handy

do you remember their tax number? 

you will be asked to verify that

all the above have expired

to verify as well

that yourself has expired 

the borders are heavily patrolled here. 

Turn your pacemaker to silent. 

Once you arrive, you can turn it on again
what did you think 

eternity beats with a pacemaker as well. 

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Personal notes: 

This poem was published as part of the collection 'Public time' (2014). It offers an unflinching acknowledgement of the poet's mortality and imminent death as she approaches the last stop of a long 'trip' - the 'trip' being a metaphor for life. 

Dimoula uses the second person to command a fellow passenger through the final stages of this 'trip'. However, the reference to the pacemaker at the end of the poem suggests that Dimoula is actually talking to herself (She has mentioned in other poems that she has a pacemaker). 

The short sharp sentences in the first three lines suggest a state of alert and emergency as the poet approaches the end of her 'trip'. 

At the end of the first stanza, as Dimoula prepares for the trip's last stop, she puts on a perfume called 'LIFE'. The name of the perfume reveals the metaphoric meaning of this 'trip'. Putting the 'LIFE' perfume on is a bittersweet gesture. Perfumes have many pleasant signifies associated with beauty and socialising, but in this case, this pleasure will be, literally, short-lived. The perfume suggests life's flimsy nature. 

The sarcastic references in the first and second stanza about vanity and applying eyeliner suggest Dimoula makes fun of her (and our) obsession with appearance. 

The third stanza introduces a religious undertow to her 'trip', referring to the final judgment of our sins. The sarcastic tone suggests that Dimoula does not take seriously the possibility of such judgment. 

The fourth stanza cements the poem's metaphor that the poet's life is approaching its end ('yourself has expired'). 

The poem's last line is a final stark acknowledgement: nothing can remain eternal, not even eternity.  

To be consoled by shapely Caryatids is devastating

‘I don’t have the proper clothes to enter.’ I stand outside, and I observe from a great distance of respect this majestic temple that history built once again, dedicated to the divine centuries.

I remain proudly calm by this discovery, given as it appears, that all of contemporary Greece is built on top of sequential Greekness. In fact, I like the idea that even Kypseli, my home for almost a century — I must be its only antiquity —, would not completely disappoint the archaeological hoe. The excavation would discover some plebeian fragment or even an amphora. 

A lion at the top. Guardian of the dead sanctity, which wrote about its life on earth under the light of the inner depths. How much did it win, when was it defeated, and in which sequence? Did triumph come first followed by the debacle, or was irresolute the winner once again? 

I am transfixed by the honorary depth in which time hid its distinguished dead, and the draconian, immobile from the weight gates with which it shut the entrance, as if (in addition to that sacrilegious decay, which death allows to enter) another unannounced decay will arrive, and then another, and another, and another — a whole posse, of which oblivion is the mastermind. 

And it is devastating that the deceased is being consoled and entertained by young, lively beautiful, shapely Caryatids, formally dressed in an elegant, cast, multi-pleated… sacrifice. 

And since the home is where I lay my head to sleep, it interests me most, I pray and dream that Alexander the Great was the occupant of this memorial tomb. And I say this not of my own megalomania, but to stop that sullen mermaid from being battered by the wild sea of her question: ‘Is king Alexander still alive?’

That he is alive, I would be able to tell her. 

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Personal notes: 

This thought piece (written in prose) was published in Kathimerini newspaper’s ‘K’ inlet magazine on October 6th, 2014. It was part of several thought pieces by prominent Greek scholars who were asked to provide commentary on the archaeological findings at Amphipolis. 

Some background about the excavations at Amphipolis is essential to understand Dimoula’s thought piece. 

Amphipolis, an ancient city located in Northern Greece, was an important naval base during the reign of Alexander the Great. It was the birthplace of famous Macedonian admirals, including Laomedon of Mytilene. 

During the early and mid 20th century, several individuals discovered parts of a broken marble monument scattered around the ancient Amphipolis area. The monument was restored in its entirety around 1940 and depicts a lion more than 4 meters in height. It is understood that the monument was set up in the 4th century BC to honour Laomedon. The original location of the monument is not known, although many believe the lion used to be on top of the Kasta hill at Amphipolis. 

In August 2014, archaeologists discovered a tomb at the foot of the Kasta hill. This tomb has been described as the largest burial monument ever discovered in Greece, and news from its excavation has been a prominent media sensation in Greece in the past few months. The findings have sparked lively discussions about the possible ‘tenant’ of the tomb. Many Greeks initially speculated the tomb belonged to Alexander the Great. Although this speculation has no archaeological merit and has been dismissed as lacking credible historical evidence, it remains a fantasy in the minds of many Greeks who are very proud of their history. 

Dimoula was asked to write this thought piece following one of the discoveries at the Kasta tomb site: two female statues of the Caryatid type that support the entrance to the second chamber of the tomb. Caryatids are sculptured female figures serving as the architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar. 

Dimoula’s thought piece begins with a reference to a popular Christian Orthodox ecclesiastical hymn sung during Holy week. The hymn refers to one of Jesus’ parables about a man who was not allowed to join a wedding’s festivities because of his improper attire. The real reason for the man’s dismissal was not his clothes, but his sinful soul. In this context, in the phrase ‘I don’t have the proper clothes to enter’, clothes refer to one’s soul, and entrance refers to God’s kingdom — the heavens. 

Dimoula uses this phrase to signify she is hesitant to approach something sacred. By doing so, she differentiates her attitude towards the Kasta tomb from that of her other compatriots (and the media). While everyone is keen to view photos and find out as much as possible about what is inside the tomb, Dimoula, out of respect to what the tomb signifies, hesitates and keeps her distance. 

But why is this tomb sacred to Dimoula? 

The first paragraph gives a clue about the tomb's significance. She views the tomb as honouring the passing of time (the ‘divine centuries’). The passing of time is a common theme in Dimoula's poetry, and by introducing it here she connects this thought piece with the rest of her work.

The second paragraph makes a more explicit connection between the tomb and Dimoula as a person. She is calm about the excavations (again in contrast to everyone else) because she knows that every location has something significant to reveal in its own past. She suggests this is the case with people as well, and with her own past, which makes this thought piece more personal.  

The third paragraph explores further what the tomb signifies to Dimoula. She refers to the lion monument believed to have been situated at the top of the Kasta hill and perceives this lion as a guardian to ‘sanctity’.  

Dimoula questions whether this ‘sanctity’ is a victor or defeated. This uncertainty suggests a struggle, and given her reference to ‘inner depths’ as the cause of this struggle, 'sanctity' may be a metaphoric reference to human relationships, particularly relationships with loved ones. For Dimoula, human relationships are sacred, perhaps because she respects and acknowledges their power. 

Human relationships are sacred also because they endure and suffer the 'attacks' of passing time. This is explored in the fourth paragraph, where Dimoula suggests that decay, decline and oblivion are the feared looters of the Kasta tomb. In this symbolism, Dimoula expresses her fear of inevitable decay in human relationships. As time passes, such decay leads to loss and pain. Dimoula signifies here that what she dreads the most is the inevitable loss of a loved one. 

In the last paragraph, Dimoula introduces a character who symbolises and embodies this fear and loss. By introducing this character, Dimoula turns the spotlight away from Alexander the Great (again in contrast to her compatriots) towards his sister, the mermaid, who as legend has it wanders the seas asking about her brother’s fate. For Dimoula, Alexander's sister, and her suffering is what this tomb is all about. 

Dimoula feels for Alexander’s sister and wants to give her good news. She wants to release her from the pain, or at least give the mermaid some hope. This spark of hope is an unusual presence in Dimoula's work, which is rarely affectionate.   

Dimoula's note to Alexander's sister subverts the nationalistic fantasies of her compatriots and gives the tomb more human and universal significance. For Dimoula, the tomb at Amphipolis is not significant because it could belong to Alexander the Great. The tomb is significant because it gives hope for alleviating the pain of loss. 

Fidelity

A tiny cupid cast from its
own antiquity.
The clay
shaped it half-lying on a
transparent base
to show also its secret side.

All these years resting safely
on a shelf - reredos of souvenirs.
I found it shattered.
Its parts now a pile of pieces
elsewhere the leg elsewhere the wings
elsewhere the blame.

I suspect by a duster
driven to take revenge
only God knows
by which determined old wound.

I can fix the damage
I have studied loss's anatomy
but I hesitate

I suppose if I leave it
shattered in pieces
it remains more like love.

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Personal notes: 

This poem was published as part of the collection 'Public time' (2014).

In this poem, Dimoula describes the destructive nature of love, whether in its loss or suffering.

Dimoula focuses on an object from her past, like in many of her other poems which reference photographs, souvenirs and personal items. The object - a small souvenir made of clay on a transparent base - represents one of love's most popular personifications: a cupid. Dimoula chooses this object to reflect on her view of love. 

For Dimoula, love can be destructive - a state that is reflected by the shattered cupid. Dimoula seems to have reconciled with this view of love - for a moment she considers fixing the broken cupid but decides against it. This decision shows acceptance and realisation that she might prefer to be reminded of love's suffering. 

For health

Who would have imagined
my survival's last companion,

a Pacemaker.

A union of one flesh, obviously.

It nestles inside my sternum

happy with setting my heart

but also grateful.

It recognises that
it too lives by dint of my heart

like a man does.

The heart’s guardian angel.

Accompanies it everywhere, during sleep

at church, the cemetery

the cafe, the theatre

the mind’s
long journeys.

It lifts

all of the heart’s weights,

the heart must not lift even its own feather. 

A touchingly discreet companion

never asking about the heart’s past

but measuring its pulse day and night.

It says to the heart
I am here don’t worry

I am all yours believe me

as if in love. Madly.

Momentarily. Like others before it.

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Personal notes: 

This poem was published as part of the collection 'Public time' (2014).

The poem is a prime example of the poet's long list of musings about love and loss. 

The subject of the poem is the romantic 'relationship' between a heart and its pacemaker [The heart and the pacemaker are personified in the original Greek text - the heart is a feminine noun and the pacemaker a masculine noun.]

The use of the first person in the first stanza ('my survival') suggests that Dimoula is referring to her own medical condition, which makes this a personal and confessional poem.

At first, the 'relationship' at the centre of the poem may seem amusing. A closer read suggests something more 'classic', universal and sincere at its core - a love story of unparalleled intimacy, affection and co-existence, and, ultimately, devastating failure. 

Dimoula achieves a remarkable balance between contradictory elements in the poem's story and its delivery. The subject is both tragic and comic, she is caustic and tender, bitter and caring, detached and emotional, wise and immature. 

There is also no happy end to the story - this love, like all past loves in the poet's life, is doomed to fail. The denouement is foreshadowed in the fourth stanza (one of the places the poet visits is the cemetery - a symbol of all the poet has lost in the past, including her husband) but delivered with a powerful blow at the poem's last line. 

God's puzzlement

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'.]  

Curriculum

Time
I submit to you my thesis
with you, basically, its subject
because you have made so far
what I am now.

Ι came from scant resources
I wasn't sent abroad for higher
ignorance. I stayed here paying rent
to a low ceiling inner
knowledge of my homeland.

I followed the cost effective
method of an absent teacher
and any absence in general,
which is a more extensive education method.

I struggled, impossible to enter
the difficult chapter
of 'absent meaning'.
What I had found to have
was absent to others.
And although I wondered rigorously,
wonder itself marked me with zero.
I corrected the mark wondering anew
about the absent logic of your method
time
to bring changes and by wonder
take back completely erasing
the previous gentle form
that things had
before they became educated.

And now even
with the method of an absent maturing
I shrink get startled wonder
how even all of these absences have changed
they were not as frequent

how death has changed
it was not as frequent

when love passionately introduced it to me.


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Personal notes: 

This poem was published as part of the collection 'Greenhouse grass' (2005).

In this poem, Dimoula muses about the passing of time, love and mortality. 

The last line of the poem is crucial to interpreting what has preceded. Dimoula suggests time takes its toll on love, as it does in life. 

For most of the poem, she personifies time and talks directly to it, acknowledging the changes and loses the passing of time brings in our lives and our loves. 

In the first stanza, Dimoula suggests the passing of time, growing up, and our mortality shape love and who we are. She presents life and love as forms of education and time as the ultimate teacher. 

Dimoula continues to make parallels between time and education throughout the rest of the poem.

In the second to fourth stanzas, she talks about being loyal to a country, a house, or a lover despite an absence of reciprocity. Absence is a key theme here: it is repeated several times, suggesting it is a major experience in life and love. 

The last three lines present the full implications of this experience: change, loss, and death are intrinsic parts of life and love. 

Jungle

It's morning and all of the world

is staged

at the ideal distance of a shootout. 

The guns have been selected, 

the same ones always, 

your needs, my needs. 

The person responsible for counting one, two, three, shoot

was late, 

and until his arrival

we sat on the same goodmorning 

and gazed at nature. 

The countryside was going through puberty 

and the green was being lewd. 

The pastoral June dragged

screams of a trophied atrocity. 

Gripping and swinging

from a branch of trees and sensations

to a branch of trees and sensations, 

a short film's Tarzan

chased invisible beasts 

in the small jungle of a story. 

The forest was promising birds

and snakes. 

A venomous abundance of opposites. 

The daylight fell sharp on 

everything that wasn't daylight, 

and the amatory brightness

kissed passionately everything that wasn't love, 

even your own frown. 

There was no one at the small church

other than its charged name, the Liberator. 

One defiant Jesus 

was counting his life with a miser's passion:

nails and thorns.  

No wonder he hasn't heard

the shootings. 

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Personal notes: 

This poem was published as part of the collection 'The little of the world' (1971).

In this poem, Dimoula describes the inherent contradictions and tension in a married couple's life. 

The first stanza describes a couple's relationship as a battle of needs. Dimoula suggests tensions arise from desiring to fulfil one's needs when being with another person. The stanza sets the stage for an imminent 'shootout' between a couple. The 'shootout' may refer to an argument, or physical tension, perhaps even during lovemaking. Dimoula suggests these tensions are common in marriage ("the same ones always").

The rest of the poem prolongs (or delays) the execution of this 'shootout', which doesn't occur until the poem's last line, by elaborating on the contradictions in the thoughts and feelings of a married couple.  

Dimoula suggests marriage is like an imaginary 'jungle', filled with liberating ("birds") but also stifling ("snakes") sensations and thoughts. The second and third stanza describe moments of passion that entice these contradictions. 

Passion and feelings take over rational thoughts (another contradiction) in the third stanza, as one lover continues to embrace the other, despite obvious disengagement and dissatisfaction ("frown"). 

The last stanza suggests religion encourages (or even misleads) people to commit to marriage, without acknowledging its tensions and complexities. Dimoula suggests here that there is a contradiction between the church's liberating promise and the strains of marriage.