`
OLYMPUS
Like a hovering nest of clouds
Powdered with its thick snow
Olympus flies skywards each morning
“Are you real or false?”
Grandpa would shout enthusiastically
Looking admiringly at the mountain’s ivory aspect.
Be it of water or ashes the years go by quickly
Grandpa is a remembrance now
And the mountain there stalwart and invincible
Inciting its white edge into the void
Looking immaculate
Broad and sharp and finally
Imposing itself on the clear sky.
Grandpa’s words are whetted on my tongue
“Are you real or false?” now I shout
And entranced I look admiringly at its holy cone.
`
*
JACK
Jack, is it snowing up there?
Jack, is it raining?
Who has hung out his snow-white sheets
Which spread and flutter in the sky?
Like the waters of a white sea do they rise
When it foams with the wrecks of dreams
Alarming us with its roaring.
So, Jack, tell me. Is it snowing up there?
Here it’s a cool high summer
Here it’s night
Here blows the wind of misfortune
I want to leave
The roads are closed
Our orchards have no fruit
Something invisible scares us and worries us.
Jack, Jack, Jack,
The dragon is here.
Where’s your bean stalk?
Cough, sneeze, laugh, and let me hear you, Jack.
`
*
THE CHAIR
Everyone knows
That this home
Is mourning its dead
Because nights now
In the withering courtyard
Is haunted his forgotten
Chair.
`
*
SUNDAY
Look at the mountains
And the precipices
The precipices
And the high mountains
Because today is
Sunday
The day closest
To death.
`
*
SINCE
Since it is written that ashes I’ll become
Then may I also become fire
Become first a blazing flame
An unrelenting coal fire
Become even the unruly smoke
With the dream’s wild elevation
And then may I fall upon the earth
As cold dust and dew
A black silence in the inglenook
Since it ιs written that ashes I’ll become
Since absolute silence I’ll become
Then may I also become a cry
And soar into the lightning’s
Sudden streams
Become the soul of thunder
Voice of sorrow clang of victory
The roar of a rushing torrent
A violent strong glorious passage
Since absolute silence I’ll become .
`
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Ilias Kefálas was born in 1951 in the village Méligos, the Prefecture of Tríkala. He read political sciences at the University of Athens, where he lived from 1969 to 1992. Nowadays he is back home, cultivating poetry and observing nature that insists on its perpetual flourishing. He collaborates with literary and art magazines in his capacity of critic. He has a column in the magazine Frear where he publishes critical assessments of individuals and texts of contemporary Greek literature. In the past, he was a critic for the magazines Tomés, Nées Tomés, Diavázo, Odós Panós and Néa Efthíni, where he published over one thousand reviews. To date, he was published twenty-five books, of which ten are poetry, four prose, five essays, five for children and one poetry anthology.
His poems have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian and Polish.