Boro

By Dr. Paul Campanis

Boro
O topos mou thithasky.
I can
My place teaches me

If one has any sense, the turn always goes to Kavafi.
His message is 1) witness, 2) write, 3) hope.
A few tidbits to get through a rainy Saturday. Too wet to rake leaves.
I shall pick up my Laura and go to Damoulas's supermarket and on from there.
She is my daughter.
He stands, gentleman in a straw hat, motionless, at a slight tilt to the
universe.
Tells us we are bad, can't help it, won't change. Lives in 400BC
although born in the 1860's.

Challenges me as a Nisirian to do one thing, really, propagate the sense
that humans are rich, full, contradictory. That is that and we can't help
it, never will. But in this daily failure, a spark exists. We call it
life, enthusiasm, joy.
It keeps us from crawling in the hole, the hole of anger. I have been
there recently. Don't like it, the hole.
I want the light.
Kavafi tells us we don't learn from our mistakes or by the ones of
others.
He never cares much about other people. Sympathy is not his thing. As
a painter he would be a realist, showing warts and big bottoms.
Actually a nasty little man. I like nasty little men. They are at
least real in a time of artifice and sillyness.
Just two more facts about the little trickster, the magical charlatan,
the consumate Greek poet whose "Come on o King of the Lacedemonians," haunts
me this morning.
He looked at the world without fear. That says something as the other
teacher, Seferi, can do the same on occasion. After all, he learned to from
Kavafi. I try but always fail. The gallant son of Nisiro is a shameless
coward. Oh, fie!
The other thing is he knew the cost of a yard of rose-silk chiton in
31BC. Curious fellow, he.
I have no idea why I get into such things with Kavafi except he engages
me. It is mostly his Greek in the poems I can barely understand. But in
this day he is in my mind. A lot.
To my kin over the world, from Nisiro, from the Aegeo pelago, from Asia
and Europe, I say a Campanis for to ponder. I just learned anger is a
greater engine than love. This thought frightens me as anger come to the
surface is a new emotion on me.
It can not be. It consumes me and I don't like it. Kavafi looks on me,
pitiful me, and says, cut it out. You have too much to see, to do. He
reminds me of the monster, George Katsimbalas, of Henry Miller's, "Colossus
of Marousi." That's all I need. Mad George, sane George, keeper of the
flame for o so many years. \
He dances around the table, grabs a grape he stuffs in his face, dreams
of this or that fantastic thing he did once or didn't do, skips, hums,
belches a coy noise, smiles to himself. He contemplates Greece, my Greece,
and Greece is all. Greece is enough.
As the Americans say, have a nice day . Pavlos Kambanys.