Translator’s note — from Natalia Bukia-Peters’ introduction to Why I No Longer Write Poems by Diana Anphimiadi (Bloodaxe Books, 2022)
Diana Anphimiadi’s paternal roots lie in Pontus, a historically Greek region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, while her mother is Georgian, from the area known as Megrelia-Colchis, where the famous legends of the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts, Jason and Medea also originate. In this small area of the Caucasus, Georgian literature – and Georgian poetry in particular – has always been of central importance — and its legacy, the urgency of expression and narrative allusions, can be felt in Anphimaidi’s work. This selection includes several poems where figures from myth, particularly classical Greek myth, speak back against the confinement of their stories. But the goddesses that Anphimiadi gives voice to are not the museum pieces from an overly familiar narrative but fully realised acts of heart-breaking intensity.
It is heartening to see Anphimiadi take her place alongside many other strong women poets from recent generations who are dramatically reshaping contemporary Georgian poetry. She gives abstract thought a body, a pulse.
/ / /
Sleeping Beauty
Hello, I am your country.
Breathe (whisper a word)
on the glass case of this coffin
and polish it well
(the sun has not warmed it in a long time –
the only glitters are teardrops).
Come closer,
I am your Diana.
Best not to kiss me
or you’ll get lipstick on your lips –
the final smile, my last revenge.
I understand, you’ve worked long and hard
to carve that wooden horse you rode here.
I made you look back, through the dust of spun wool –
I even passed you my binoculars.
Are you looking for answers? Sweep your finger
in this dust, like a bowl of honey,
screw up your eyes and taste it.
Then you’ll remember which dream you were in,
the dream I believed in, was clothed in.
And I’ll just turn over
and go on sleeping
until the next time,
until the second coming.
* * * * *
Eurydice
The harvest of Jerusalem artichokes
is ruined. The rain washed them away.
Around my house, my cosy house,
are rotting narcissus bulbs
and the drowned chrysalises of butterflies.
Why did I think you would look after me?
You said Nomen omen –
in other words, you froze.
If things were a little different
the ivy roots
would reach out to me with their slim fingers.
But you made a wish
and they plant their houses on my body
and I am poisoned
with smoke and snake venom.
I thought you would look after me
but you said Nomen omen –
in other words, you froze.
You are blind without me.
How can I make you understand?
I cover myself in ants, in braille.
Your tunic is pure white,
white stains don’t show.
I have to think of something.
I thought you would look after me
but you said Nomen omen —
in other words, you froze.
Here at the centre of the earth
is my stove. I am your blacksmith,
baking clay jugs from cakes of earth.
We set off, but then we stopped —
you were afraid
to lead me on your own.
I thought you would console me
but you said Nomen omen —
in other words, Freeze.
The harvest of Jerusalem artichokes
is ruined. The rain washed them away.
Around my house, my cozy house,
are rotting narcissus bulbs
and the drowned chrysalises of butterflies.
* * * * *
Persephone
Don’t wait for the swallow at your window,
or the easing of your breath.
None of that means a thing –
I alone am Spring.
The voice that floats between icebergs,
beginning to thaw, to warm, to hurry towards you –
I am Spring.
Lily-of-the-valley growing from the skull,
songs returning from warmer countries –
I am Spring.
What can drag me underground
but the sole of my own foot,
my own body, below the waist?
I walk towards the underworld,
following the road of pomegranate seeds,
the monthly harvest of drops of blood.
That kingdom is so deep,
who would not be lost there
in the unfathomable question of their own sex?
I said I walk there myself, to meet that death
that is in love.
My hand moves down from my waist,
moves down to the knee,
down over the toes…
that deep abyss is my underworld,
there is no other.
Above the waist I am Spring,
below the waist I am Death.
They will kill me, sever my voice,
cut my throat, cut me out
of the wedding photo,
tear out my heart
and its assignations,
if they discover I’m unfaithful –
not with someone else
but with myself,
and not just once in a while.
* * * * *
Silent Writing
Bring autumn closer
by one tree, by one frosted leaf,
and keep the mysterious forest at a distance.
A flower blooms on my chest.
Minotaur the cancer prince
extends from the dark recesses of the body
his labyrinth of metastases,
all leading to fear.
How can love be saved?
Bring the end closer
by one voice, one knot of hair,
by the dead rope of a white plait.
By one circuit of the clock’s hand –
it goes around and around,
gripping the throat tight.
As if a young goat waited to be sacrificed,
nibbling the tarmac, chewing the rope,
and Tariel, the prince in the poem,
gave it the first marks of his love –
the scratch of the panther’s claw.
Bring love closer,
bring autumn closer.
The tumour blooms and spreads,
clasping my heart once more –
that prince minotaur
slashing me with loneliness –
to hasten the end.
* * * * *
Winter
When I found that you loved me, I laughed myself to death.
They carried me out, singing their hymns,
but the gloomy shroud
could not hide the trace of laughter,
that joyful wound on my freshly dead face.
I laughed myself to death –
when you hear the news, don’t look for some other cause.
When I learnt that you loved me, I wept myself to death.
(You can drown in tears, if there are enough of them.)
I cried a torrent of tears
that washed away my face like sand.
Yes, there are other things to die of,
but I wept myself to death –
when you hear the news, don’t look for some other cause.
Once I died of cold.
My body ran to you so fast
my eyes could not keep up.
Ecstatic, swept along on a flood,
I touched your dry eyelashes,
the empty ducts.
I died of fear too,
and of thirst,
and hunger killed me
with the scent of bread, the warmth of soup.
But on the motorway
when the car came to kill me
I saw your crazy speed and gave way.
Go and rattle someone else’s shroud –
I have the rattle of the snow, of the snake.
I want to taste spring water from your hand.
I want to tell you there is time,
we have time for love.
We have so much time
we outlived it long ago.
* * * * *
Loss
At last I solved the parable
of the five loaves and two fishes:
taking what was not enough for one,
and sharing it with a hundred, a thousand or even a million.
As if you amounted to nothing, not even a word,
yet wore yourself out in the markets, the squares
and amphitheatres, talking rubbish.
As if both your legs were broken,
and you used your crutch as a rod
to dredge up from the depth of your memory
the fishes of rhythm, sea-stars, one or two steps
of that dance you loved so much,
then a phrase of the next song –
you listen, and listen, but you can’t hear it.
As if you dug out from the depth of your memory
some dead-and-buried form of the verb,
reviving it on the tip of the tongue like a drop of honey –
Bellum omnium contra omnes, or something like that.
Present, past, future, then back to the beginning
and back again – anything to fill the time,
that vast empty time which is yours
now your friend has left.