The Sea, The Stars, and Kalymnos

for Charmian Clift and Maria Theodoridou



1.


In the beginning was the sea…


We staked our lives
against the oldest deity,
against whose force
no mortal can prevail,
and from whose heaving pectorals
and seething flanks
gaunt islands rise
like desiccated sponge
left bleaching aeons in Aegean sun -
our island aridest of all,
a porous fist of lilac limestone
reaching out below a bony cranium,
a martyr's skull
attached to a skeletal spine,
cracked spondylae stripped bare by time,
tenuously stretching towards Patmos
where Prohoros waits,
the rib-cage showing slits of caves
and gaping holes, eroded sockets,
channels for the rain that seldom falls
on Kalymnos, the island that is
spongiform, its pitted pores
now petrified, inhaling winds
instead of foam and brine…

What are the sons of Kalymnos
if not sea's progeny?
We staked our lives
against the oldest deity,
and often lost…
Our nostos for the odyssey
drove us on our treasure-hunt
after the Resurrection rite,
when spring was at its height.

In the season's prime we left -
young brides with ribbons
in their braids, widows,
sisters, wives with babes
and barefoot children
thronged the quays
to watch us sail,
the sponge fleets jaunty,
buoyant in their brave new paint,
vessels bearing living names -
the Nike, Thodoros, Myrsini,
poised to plumb the murky depths,
raw courage as their freight…

In those days of simple ways
the sea ruled by supreme decree,
women's lives and men's were mostly
arduous and separate…
somewhere in the azure
heart of summer lay
our loved ones' fates,
but only in our dreams
could we communicate…

We staked our lives
against the oldest deity,
and often lost…
What else could we ever be
but children of the sea?
 
In the beginning was the sea,
the oldest, fiercest deity,
then out of sponge
transformed to rock,
God created Kalymnos…




2.


Colours


When you dock at Kalymnos
the faded tiers of houses greet you
from the limestone amphitheatre
squinting into noonday sun -
the ochre and the aqua and siena
of facade and transom,
umber, crimson, cobalt domes
by penetrating light undone…

But step inside, and in the filtered
amber gloom the colours swarm
in poppy-reds and fluting blues,
cadmium, viridian - rich kilims,
lilting notes passed down
through women's interweaving hands;
and wander slowly round the port
where trehantiria are moored,
their names inscribed in primary hues
and stripes adorning shapely bows,
bright pigment meeting oily wash
like lipstick smears on sailors' mouths…




3.


Kalymniotissa


The little bride is no more than a child,
and black does not become her…(Trad.)

This was my song too, my life,
but I was not alone:
all the brides of Kalymnos
knew black must follow red, or white…
Not only war demands such sacrifice -
each year we relived Troy,
waiting for the warriors' return,
those calloused, haunted men
with visions in their eyes
we dared not contemplate or scan.

This was my schoolroom
for a few brief years -
these wooden desks
were like the boats in winter,
sheltering from gales.
Our teacher read aloud to us:
"The Iliad", "The Odyssey" -
he schooled us well,
old Kyrios Vassilis
with the withered leg…

Only in cataclysmic times
do girls prepare black dowries
to lay beneath white linen
deep inside the wooden chests,
against the day when autumn
will sail in on wind's ambivalence,
the meagre space on deck inscribed
with dreaded silences,
confirmed by one slight movement
of the captain's head, the lifted chin,
dirges in the little churches,
the empty marriage-bed…

They dressed us for spring weddings
in our bridal best - in virgin white
or costumes dyed deep crimson
like the island wine,
but this was girlish vanity,
the faint hope that we might be spared:
we knew that it was to the sea
our men were wed…


Kalymniotissa: Kalymnian woman




4.


My Anchor-chain


She smells of rosewater and cinnamon,
channelling deep currents of my brain
to limpid island coves, where thorny gorse
will reach out to entangle me -
breath of heaven, barbed clasp of monogamy…

O pothos! Torment of desire - a sponge
that drinks insatiably and asks for more:
this life, torn between vagabondage
and the marble threshing-floor…

Her hair, a river of black honey,
inundates her thighs, her knees;
her eyes are my demise, her arms
my anchor-chain…




5.


Of Salt and Truth

*

Salt is born out of the purest
of parents, the Sun and the Sea -
said Pythagoras.................

*


My love smells of the naked sea -
no cloth can mask this purity:
he'll carry it within his flesh
until he lies in earth's dim vault.

Tobacco, raki, women's breath
can leave merely a passing trace,
for deeper than the shore's warm scents
is branded brine, the taste of salt…

Our word for salt - alati,
and our word for truth - aleithia,
are as the left hand to the right;
they balance scales invisibly,
like the eyes of martyrs -
like the eyes of Saint Paraskevi -
salt and truth are our reality,
devoid of compromise…




6.


Two Kalymnian Laments

The Taste of Brine


Ever since our lives began,
aman, aman!
we have known the taste of brine -
aman, aman!
Mingled with our blood, the sea
aman, aman!
floods our veins with poetry,
aman, aman!
floods our eyes with bitter streams,
aman, aman!
floods our lungs and drowns our dreams -
aman, aman!
Thalassa pikri, pikri!
Aman, aman!
Pikri einai i zoi!
Aman…

 

A Taste of Heaven


Pastries drowned in milk and honey
(Ax! Manoly mou, Manoly!)
I prepare for bridal feasts -
(Ax! Ti zoi mou ti pikri!)
Milk is like the galaxy
(Ax! Afros tou ouranou!)
that you sail above, alone …
(Pikri einai i zoi!)
When they found you in the sea
(Ax! Manoly mou! Manoly!)
were your final thoughts of me?
(Ax! pikri zoi!)
In your arms I tasted heaven -
(Mia stigmoula tis ekstasis!)
but you left me for the deep…
(Ax! Yiati; Aman aman!)
Syrup oozes from the pastry
(Glykeia itan i zoi!)
as seawater from a sponge…
(Ax! To almyro nero!)
They found you bound in ropes of weed,
(O kaimenos mou! Aman!)
in your arms a diving-stone…
Aman!…



*These are original poems inspired
by traditional Greek island songs
and the experience of the sponge-
diving community on Kalymnos.




7.


Cosmic Charioteers

from sponge-divers to cosmonauts

The early divers plummeted,
embracing special slabs of stone,
stripped naked as the newly-born,
into a deep, uncharted zone,
a lifeline as their umbilical cord,
their lungs the last defence
between them and oblivion,
the diver's agonising death…

Later, in the 'fifties, they would don
the recent uniform and clumsy helmet,
cumbersome as tanks of oxygen.
Theirs was the final generation
diving for the livelihood
of families and communities
on Kalymnos and Symi…

As the divers' star declined,
the cosmos listened for a sign
that Earth was readying its emissaries
to probe the galaxy - the steppelands
of the Milky Way, the saltpans
and the nebulae, the captive Moon
that glowed, though worn and old,
like Mycenaean gold,
and Venus dancing Salome
beneath her suffocating veils,
attempting to subvert sang-froid,
enticing Mars and Jupiter.

The early cosmonauts, like divers
hurtling to depths and voids
their forebears could not contemplate,
relying on stored oxygen,
encumbered by their uniforms,
attached to lifelines, left their craft
to walk in space like seafaring
Kalymnians in search of sponge.

One's body is one's first
and only home.
To live by such colossal risk
internalises the unknown.
The ritual of setting off alone
inside one's epidermis, the return
inside the skin that houses us
is all we own…




8.


Ritual

The ritual of kitting up,
the steps in donning uniforms,
the helmet the last item
to be lowered into place:
the absolute precision
on which life depends,
the fine detail, the intimate
complicity of skilful hands…

The diving suit, the complex kit
for extravehicular plans
so cumbersome
on decks compliant
with the laws of gravity,
still subject to the ways of water
shifting in its bed of sand,
or in a vessel orbiting Earth's
planetary interface,
but weightless when submerged
in ocean, or in interstellar space -
a costume for the ultimate romance,
the cosmic dance…




9.


Creatures of Nostalgia


Ashore, the men of Kalymnos
twitch in their sleep like divers
maimed by nitrogen,
whose bubbles in the bloodstream
torture limbs and brain,
lurking like a subaquatic predator
deep in the mind
on voyages endured
and yet to come;
but off the coasts of Libya and Crete
they sing and dream of home,
the summer rich in fragrant figs,
hills oleating in the sun
with stunted olives,
wizened vines,
wild oregano, basil, thyme…

The dreams of cosmonauts in space -
are they of Earth?
The dreams of cosmonauts on Earth -
are they of space?

Which way is home?




10.


Apollo's Lyre


Kalymnos, this ancient island subjugated by Poseidon
lives another, secret life beneath the symbol of the lyre,
its heart locked in a power play between old gods of sea and fire,
its substance porous as a sponge, long atrophied to arid limestone.
It was the Kalymnians who sailed to Troy, and they alone
encode the living odyssey in duty transformed by desire -
pride subsuming all regret consumes their atavistic pyre
and whispers the ancestral mantra: flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone…

Children of the winds and tides, leventes and leventisses -
your heritage pride's bitter bread, and poverty, and fearlessness -
tell me when ghost divers come to claim their place among the throngs
who linger through the winter evenings on the quays to sing old songs:
let me stand among you once, in flesh or spirit as may be,
to feel your voices pass through me as brine through sponge - sea of my sea…




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