Sunday 18 October 2015

Costas Karyotakis

Today, a poem by Costas Karyotakis, in my English translation. The original appears below it.


ALL TOGETHER…

All together, in a rout,
seeking end-rhyme, we set out:
such a well-bred, fine intention
has become our life’s ambition.

By lexical manipulations
we change our paper hearts’ emotions;
our poems in the papers show it:
we earn the right to be called ‘Poet’.

Free in the wind our long hair flows,
also our ties: we strike a pose.
Prose we judge beyond enduring,
normal people far too boring.

Just for us God made each creature,
and indeed the whole of nature.
Sending reports to depths terrestrial,
we raise ourselves to heights celestial.

What though we spend our days unfed,
under bridges find our bed?
That’s our sacrificial fate,
victims of ‘Time’s Current State’.

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