Take caution

When you are setting up the table

before you sit down

check thoroughly

your opposite chair 

if it is strong perhaps it creaks

perhaps the notches became loose

perhaps the joints have worn out

if a worm

undermines the frame

because the person who doesn't sit there

gets heavier by the day.

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Personal notes: 

This poem was published as part of the collection 'We moved next door' (2007). 
Its themes, like in many of Kiki Dimoula's poems, involve memory, personal loss/absence and the experience of being alone. This experience can be painful, but endurable.  

The poet may be addressing herself, or giving advice to her audience. 

The vacant chair opposite to the poet is a metaphor for the memory or mental presence of an intimate other. Perhaps this person used to sit there with her/us (an actual loss), or perhaps this person was never there (a desired/imagined loss). Either way, the poet/us are alone at the table. 
Every day the preservation of this memory/mental presence (a ritual) becomes harder, though the reasons for this are not clear. Is it because with age the poet's/our mental abilities are becoming weaker (and therefore the memory becomes heavier to hold), or is it because she is/we are increasingly hurting by this person's absence? The poet may be warning us that the person's absence will become more and more painful, or maybe she is being sarcastic about her own fixation with this ritual. 

There is a hint of optimism as well. Is the ritual an act of holding on to a painful loss/desire, or is it a way to strengthen the resistance to this pain and make it endurable? 

In Greek, Dimoula refers to the person as a 'he' (most probably referring to her deceased husband).  However, I did not specify the gender of the person in this translation because the poem can easily take a more universal context. 

Building

Truly how well did it go
that big business for feelings
you launched.

I hear it knelt you down.
At least are you clear of all the liabilities?
Have you helped oblivion to build?
It had been wanting for years
its own family
its own home
away
away from the memory
of those who loved them both.

Un-expectations

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. 

The periphrastic stone

Speak.

Say something, anything. 

Just don't stand there like a solid absence. 

Choose even one word 

that binds you tighter

to indefiniteness. 

Say:

"unfairly", 

"tree", 

"bare". 

Say:

"we will see", 

"imponderable", 

"weight". 

There are so many words that dream of

a short, unbound, life with your voice. 

Speak. 

We have so much sea ahead of us. 

Where we finish

the sea begins. 

Say something. 

Say "wave", which does not stand still. 

Say "boat", which sinks

if you overload it with prepositions. 

Say "moment"

that screams help it is drowning, 

don't save it, 

say

"I did not hear". 

Speak.

The words have feuds between them, 

they have rivalries: 

if one of them captures you, 

another sets you free. 

Pick a word from the night

by luck. 

A whole night by luck. 

Don't say "whole", 

say "diminutive", 

which lets you escape. 

Diminutive

sensation, 

sorrow

whole

mine.

The whole night.  

Speak. 

Say "star", which fades. 

Silence does not diminish with just one word. 

Say "stone", 

which is an unbreakable word. 

Like that, so far from it, 

so I can put a title

to this coastal walk. 

---------------------------------------------

Personal notes: 

This poem was published as part of the collection 'The little of the world' (1971). 
It is perhaps Dimoula's most popular poem. 

The poem is playful in style but melancholic in its content. The last line establishes its context: it involves the poet taking a long coastal walk in the verbal absence of a companion. 

It is possible that this companion is physically absent as well (that the poet is in fact alone), though such a possibility does not change the poem's meaning. Whether physically there or not, the companion's silence equals to an absence. There is also the possibility that the poet is addressing herself.

The poet personifies most of the words she voices. In a few occasions, this personification can only be described as 'literal' (the word 'boat' is sinking, the word 'stone' is unbreakable, the word 'wave' does not stand still). In other occasions this personification is figurative ( the word 'moment' is drowning, words dream or have feuds between them). 

The rivalling decay

Move aside time so I can feel.

I got invited to a wedding somewhere in your neighborhood
and, as required,  I sprinkled your street
with a few dried steps.

Your street has turned into a sidewalk.
There's bar tables right outside
your house. If you believe,
all that space it took
for a hesitation
to cross and come here starving,
is now being thrashed by a rude
sacrilegious rivalling food smell.

I raise the old habit up the window.
The crevice stands like a wheelie clarinet
in front of the slightly open
and next to it the wall like a cyclops
glares at me with an ugly box.
So you installed air conditioning.
Meaning you drilled beyond doubt
the heat I met you in.
Such modernisms and such transformations.

Βut the blow was waiting for me elsewhere.
Τhere, at how slothfully the memory was stirred
about the prosecutions. How best to word this
just for formality's sake, out of an obligation
the reductions sighed a couple of times.

It seems one gets tired of growing older.
The confrontation arrives
and collapses exhausted, a grown man.

Memory is derived from the word body
exhausted as well, gone are the affliction's past nimblenesses  -
them derived from the word vigor.
The reflexes are slow.
That's why while driving through the nearby pains - manual -
you see it enter naturally
into the opposite lane
and bam hit its head on the wheel.

That's where your eyes will see torture
and not in the small pains the heat experienced
when you were taking it down.

Move aside time.

Apropos

When the last shooting TV host
announces as he falls my dear viewers
this has been today's last update
thank you for joining me
and the stars' channel is laid
with biting silent snow I am startled
I wonder what has happened where has he fallen
the person who kept announcing me softly
until the dawn
of his goodnight's starry screen.

---------------------------------------------

Personal notes:

This poem was published as part of the collection 'Departures' sound' (2001). 

Like many of Kiki Dimoula's poems, it relates to loss and its aftermaths. The intimacy of the poet's words, the playful use of imagery, the direct reference to herself ('I say') and to a male object suggest that this is a very personal poem, perhaps addressed to her deceased husband. 

The poet paints two vivid images: one of a night sky full of stars, and one of a TV screen at the end of a day's broadcast. 

In the past, Greek TV stations did not broadcast on a 24/hour basis. They employed hosts/announcers to appear on screen at the beginning and end of each day's broadcast to welcome or say goodnight to viewers (usually right after midnight). These TV hosts/announcers functioned also as live TV guides at other times - they made several announcements during the day - hence the reference in the poem about the 'last update' of the day. 

At the beginning of the poem, Dimoula draws a parallel between the fall of a shooting star in the sky and the 'exit' of the TV host through his/her last announcement. She then draws another parallel between the night sky and the TV screen's analogue noise/static (now that the day's broadcast has finished). She likens this 'noise' to snow, which is painfully cold and silent (notice the oxymoron between 'noise' and 'silent'). This perhaps reflects how the poet is feeling at the day's end. 

The poet continues on to draw another parallel between the TV host/announcer and the person who used to share the nights with her. She is surprised that, like the TV host, that person is not there anymore to make his own 'announcements', until dawn. The order of the words in the Greek original suggests that these softly spoken announcements affirmed the poet's presence (perhaps it was just whisperings of her name).

The poet's surprise at finding herself without her intimate other suggests that this is a recent loss.