WRESTLING ROUNDS (translated by Yiannis Goumas)
To Panayotis Linardakis
Dirty bare footprints
on the floor tiles, on the grass.
Two cats are courting
in my garden tonight.
They approach, withdraw,
stop short, jump up,
scratch my arms.
I place my hands in the night.
Two cats lacerate my flesh.
I give them my flesh
to trample on,
to paint,
to embroider,
to make it a smooth painterly
surface.
I thrust my hands into the night.
I paint the walls
of the nouveaux riches for a living,
I colourwash
the gates at night
with money put by.
Head bowed, palette
laid aside, I don’t set up an easel,
don’t use paintbrushes,
two courting cats
portray me,
two wrestling bodies,
two souls that forgive each other,
two eyes, one looking
into the other,
for this too can happen,
my right eye looks
into my left one,
one cat goes at me
the other pirouettes
away,
my one hand chases
the other hand.
Painter with one cat
as bedfellow
and the other
on his belly, dirty
white footprints
on the canvas
which is my skin.
I remove my bloody
hands from the night.
The night recompensed me
with its carmine colour.
The cats with their love.
The nouveaux riches with their money.
The walls with their sensitivity,
the critics with dirty
slimy footprints
on my works.
The night painted
my two hands.
I withdraw them from its favour.
Hide them.
Stick them into my pockets.
Lead them astray
by holding a cigarillo,
a glass of Bacardi,
a girl’s nipple,
a boy’s mop,
my mother’s white hair.
I fondle not the night, O Lord.
