Live Free

A sense I have is that so much knowledge is locked into some narrow system of beliefs. It puts a straghtjacket on thought.

I am for, not against. I let the negative lie dormant in my breast. I refuse to feel any of it at all. Let the socialists, the capitalists, the vegetarianists, the others say their say. It is incumbent on me to try to be free enough to tell the story of my ancestors, without selling an idea,soup or soap. That is what I am trying to say. It is my thing to reproduce my so recent ancestors, Cavafy and Seferi for two reasons. One it is fun. It passes the time. And two, they live again in the reproduction, in the little reminiscences I create. I don't know their message fits into a salable package I can take to N.Y. and sell. No-one may care, except some stranger who approaches me up to the CVS outlet store in Walpole, a discount store, and says how much he likes me on cable tv.

He's one of my six viewers. He identifies his love of our culture... he's Greek, like me, Peter Giannacopoulos.... and my heart soars. That a stranger would recognize my costume, my stone bola I wear around my neck, over a working man's t-shirt and he knows I am the same figure on Channel 8 in Canton, good ole Massachusetts. He saw me on tv and that is all I need to keep it flowing. That kind of feedback feeds me as well as the evening meal does.

Frank Capra, the filmmaker, told me "have fun." I met him when I was an academic corporon. He inscribed a big book of his for me, which I regretably gave away to Elaine Kay. I hope she shall hang on to it. I do enjoy it,when I write. It is a playful exercise for me. A poem is easy to approach. To address. It is a thing you talk to. One needs a kind of loose dalliance, a lighthearted miem, an easy stance. The thing, the poem, is muscular, plastic, able to change shapes at a moment. It is not carved in stone. As a short-order cook, I fry it up to give it a taste. I move it about in the pan. It is a self-inflicted dance that I dish out in a variety of styles. Cavafy and Seferi engage me in a casual duel of words. I don't let the fact that I am a lousy translator bother me. That's life and I work around the linguistic challenge and just do my best to be faithful to the idea of the poem.

It happens to be true that a relaxed stroll through the halls of poetic vision can have some salutary results. New writing appears. I urge the freedom-seekers among us to write open-like, even when funny stuff appears on the doorstep, on the poetic stoop. Write for yourself. Live for it. Be happy in your work. There is nothing more important, nothing more satisfying. Nothing I can think of, anyways. Turn a phrase, stalk an idea, travel a dark alley, grasp a special word in your work.

The next few paragraphs were written long after this story was conceived, but it will fit... I hope. I have been on a plane since early A.M. when I got on in Phoenix after a visit to son Paul and the gracious Michelle. I went up to Columbus and after deicing us, to Washington. THe direct flight to bountiful Boston from Ohio had to be cancelled, so we were to go to Washington and thence to Boston. The big plane got to Washington alright, but had to go right back to Columbus, where eventually I slept two hours on the floor. Previous plane had skidded off the runway at National Airport. We went back to Columbus and waited. Got on a new plane and sat five hours, as we were once again deiced. A mess. The polite pilot, Barry Cooper, he claimed to be, mercifully cancelled the flight and after changing airlines from America West, to U.S. Air, to take a 7 A.M. flight out of Columbus, I lay me down to sleep on the floor, on a miniscule pillow I got off the plane. By the way, I left it on the U.S. Air flight the next day. I hope the pillows are interchangeable, one line to the next.

As I finally may be headed to Boston on U.S. Air, I reread a little paperback copy of ee Cummings, another lodestar genius. Like Cav. As among us there are. So this digression is necessary to tell more of the story I am feeling through. I may or may not be headed home... this plane is also being deiced while I write this. THat's not a good thing to think about, is it? I mean when they try to deice a plane, they may miss some ice and we will all die, me and Cummings and Cavafy too.

I just discovered cUMMINGS. Never read him before. I went to an indoor fleamarket in Phoenix. "I'd like this book," to Bookseller. He said, "Take it." "Will you sign it for me?" To Paul from Vince. The poem is "may my heart always be open to little"

The poem is a blast and I hope you read it and him, his other works. He ends with "there's never been quite such a fool who could fail/ pulling all the sky over him with one smile." So the poetry follows me around. I really knew nothing about brother cummings, pulled his little poems out of all the books before me at the vacant flea market, deserted except for a bookman and a few other dealers. I will continue my story, please.

Writing about poetry is exhilarating. I wander about the house, wondering things. What does Cavafy mean by this or that? The poem envelops me. We need to reproduce our ancestral art to keep the flame alive. To know the truth. Our racial arts and our ethnic arts are the light at the end of the tunnel, the only way to get to the other side. We have to get ready to go to work, to join the line of traffic that we see out the window, but at the same time, we remember the recently dead, like Cavafy or Seferi, and mumble their words, as we shave and shower.

There's this poem, "Ionikon," or "Ionic," in English, in which Cavafy calls on his past to remember a little wind, a whisper in the hills, the swoosh of the pagan gods his people once believed in. He calls to unseen and discredited forces, ones that run counter to the tidy Christian universe he lives in and sort of believes in. The poem is very short.

It is very hard to explain why this poem simply floors me. Perhaps it is in a line or in between two lines. Let's see. He says," oh, the poor old gods of the pagans. They got dumped. But wait, he says, they still breathe... in humans", and then comes the line, second from the bottom about the rapid, the vague movement. I can see those gods, purring about. THat is the key. You just have to visualize the vague wind, purposeful and even a bit vengeful, passing over the hot hills. I feel a strong emotion when I get to the end of the piece. It reminds me of all the supranormal events in my life. It abounds in them. Astounds me. I don't mean flashy things; always little, joyous things. So the poem is a reminder of the miraculous life the master led and the one I am now leading myself. Of course, I love to do Cavafy so much, I have to corn it up by saying, "the gods, they still love ya!" I don't know why I am so silly.

Just 'cause we busted up their statues,

'cause we booted 'em from their cathedrals,

the gods,not at all, did they die from that.

O earth of Ionia, the gods, they still love ya!

As it wakes on you, an Augusty morn,

your ether gets a vigor from their life.

Vague. Rapid movement.

Up over you hills do they pass.

The ghosts pass quietly over the hills. In times of virtual reality, when you can take a ride into the future, when you can watch video spew blood from wounds, as you munch microwave popcorn, it takes an act of imagination to see the ghosts of the gods rustle over the hills on their appointed rounds, on celestial missions. But Cavafy picks it up. He knows the Greek gods of the old days circulate ideas and benefits to those acute and able to hear still. This old history interests the poetic scholar, so Cavafy just writes an old poem. I mean to say the theme is one that troubled Greek persons at a time when two religious styles were clashing, a thousand years ago. His act is minor, the result magnificent. He is but an artist, and one might say, an ancestral artist. His imagination lets him drift effortlessly over a few hundred or thousand years. This is what I use to understand the modern world I live in. The whoosh of ghosts over the hills of steamy Ionia reminds me of the ancestral ghosts I locate in eastern Massachusetts in the year of our lord, 1993.

Cavafy makes the winds to flutter the curtains. The discounted pagan gods return to remind us to remember. They served so many years before being done in by monotheism, the only sensible religion for up-to-date and busy folks.

All we are ever asked to do is work within the tips of God's arms. That is not hard. The arms are warm. To reflect the human drama, the comedy, is all. Cavafy tells us he is pleased by our attempts to tell the Greek story. He does not expect success of our jottings, our so-called poems. He wants a person to reach the first step of the poesy ladder and tells us to do that, is a big deal. He says so in his poem, "The First Step." I believe that. All experience is sacred, even the profane, or as Cavafy puts it, especially that behaviour society considers out of the ordinary. Whether we specialize in the everyday as I do, or the unusual, as Cavafy does, with his homosexual musings, is not the point. What`s important is that we do our work. THat we enact our own poetic visions, to free our soul. To free our soul. To tell the story of the dead ones who want to be heard too. To be listened to, through us.

I am in America. I hear James Baldwin through Toni Morrison. The voice is just there. You can hear it. I know my voice and my transposition must be minor, aside the great black voice, but I admire the figures above so.

It is in the African-Americans that I hear the screams of pain, of loneness, of confusion. I wrote a poem in the Columbus airport on the way to Phoenix. This is not an unusual thing for me. I can write best when my body moves, as in travel. THe best place of all is the Green Line of the Boston MBTA. The poem came as I watched the nascent businesspersons making early morning calls on these pay phones, where you put a card in and can then talk to anyone in the whole world...including God, I am sure. I don't know what they are doing. THey look to me like aliens. Why aren't they sleeping like other sane persons? What are they buying and selling? Is what they do necessary? I just didn't like them. They seemed vulturous and not decorous. I thought they were going to take my very underwear off me. They certainly made me feel foolish, as what they were doing was purposeful as to a profit, and what I was doing was paying a family visit on a work day.

What is curious to me is that the poem I got off is a bit like Cummings'poems. But I didn't discover Cummings until I got to Phoenix. I love the poem. I am a bit uneasy, as I fear you may not understand it or worse, that you may think it is not good. It is good.

A Grebe is a grab grown

Little grebes are on the horn, making their early calls.

6 A.M. Early bird catches the worms.

A grebe is a grab who graduated college

There ain't much of anything left

Grebes got it.

A grebe is a grown grab.

Gonna get it all

Columbus airport. Booth in cafeteria

2 talking about "the corporation."

One had these blue initials

in Gothic print on his shirt cuff

gee whiz Velveeta...

Came back for a second pass Heard

"They have a hit list there."

Goodness, that is ominous

What is this? Hitlist?

Odd way to see a world.

Treat the borrowed voice holy. You honor a poet by borrowing an image from him or her, which you then use. I am continually aware of the responsibility that goes with borrowings from Greek authors. I think of the Native American who rises to spread cornmeal on earth to honor the Mother. I, with respect, often take the image of Cavafy, whatever it is I am reading of his, at the time, and adapt it to the present I live in. This way, the poet lives again for me. He instructs.

Ideas jump around. On the page. In my head. Let me introduce another poet into the pot, this Greeky brew. Seferi. I will render an updated version of Cavafy in time, but to show how it is an easy thing to do, let me illustrate with Seferi. He is a favorite for me. "Actors, Middle East," is with us. It is typical of him. Scary stuff. Despair becomes a fine art in his hands. I wrote a piece, "Props," to remember his poem and his self. The brother, Seferi. My piece is no big deal, as anyone can see. A computer could have been programmed to write it better.

In "Props," I also throw in stuff I got from Cavafy. Why not? As I point out, this fellow makes the curtains to flutter. He gets into the other dimension, the one of divine imagination. He invokes the lessons of obscure Greek history. He not only gives out with ghosts over the hills, but minor kings, sick sailors, exiled Greeks, colonist Greeks, imposters who pretend to be Greek. These voices from the past are plainly mischievous. They lurk about and look for something to distract themselves with. We need to listen up to the ancestors. To hear them, the famous, the obscures, the ghosts that flutter over the hills.

The truth is complicated. Cavafy knows the Greek truth is. Like Miro knows the Catalan is. Like Baldwin knows the African American is. Like Cummings knows the Cambridge, Mass. is. Like anyone knows his ancestral history is rich and hard to know in full. Life cannot be total, without we use history intelligently. Updated, re-enacted, made useful again. I shall play "Props." See what you think of it. But first we have the great poem of Seferi, the touchstone for my minor offering. The translation is fairly tight. I take few liberties, which leaves a few lines rough and pretty much a word-for-word Greek to English rendering.

We erect temporary theatres. Tear them down.

Wherever we stand, wherever we find ourselves.

We put up our theatres, scenery,

but the fate wins over us.

and fate ,it drags 'em down, drags 'em across ground,

and it tears us apart, drags us across ground,

actors, director,

the one who prompts the actors on their lines, musicians,

to the five hurried winds.

Pieces of flesh, canvasy scenery materials,wood, make-up,

face paint,

rhymes, sentiments, veils, adornments for the body,

masks, sunsets in canvas, yells, shrieks,

exclamations, canvas daybreaks.

Thrown this way , that way, along with us.

Tell, where go we? Tell, where go you?

On the skin's surface, the nerves are naked,

Like stripes on the onager or the zebra.

Exposed, burnt, flaky dry.

When did they deliver us babes? When bury us?

Stretched taut like the strings

of a lyre that constantly vibrates. See, too

our heart. It's a sponge

that is dragged through the streets and the marketplace.

Drinking blood and bile juice,

that of both the tetrarch and that of the theif.

An onager is a wild ass, four and a half feet high at the shoulder. The tetrarch rules one fourth of a country or a province in the ancient Roman world. The title also has the connotation of one who is a minor ruler, a subordinate administrator. A lyre is a musical instrument of ancient Greece, whose soundbox is made typically of turtle shell. Now we go to "Props," a piece I did.

We put up props to get us through the day.

AA, addictede to Winstons, Maxwell House and Ford.

We debate endlessly about Clinton and Dukakis,

to pass the time, 'till we go to bed,

to dream about Clinton and Dukakis.

Above us, the curtains flutter,

bringing us alien messages from the ancestors.

Old battles, new issues.

But we hear nothing and continue to debate

Ford and Dukaki.

The storm of information waged daily,

it scatters before the winds of the storm.

Yells and shrieks,

where to go?

where go we?

and the poet offers not a single answer.

Between babe and elder is a hole

that we use to fill ourselves with

useless impedimenta,

until we become impure, worthless, dead.

Unnecessary, if we hear the ancient lyre playing a tune.

A deadly game, life.

A gamble. If only one could hear the old ones...

To write of the emptyness of modern life is easy. If I were a rich man, I would put you and your friends in front of a camera to say what you think, feel, know, are scared of, hope or wish. I would say, "look carefully at your body as it talks. Help it to realize its dreams." I would do that, if I were a rich man. That's what I do. I go before the camera in my mind, come up with stuff that a poem or a poet make me feel. The currency I use is feeling, never thought. The same, self-same flutter of the curtain, the whoosh of a wild wind in the hills yonder. I see my body and not my mind, and then put the body into words. That is to say, it is not something I think about and that I write on the paper, but a thing I see. It is in the movement of the performer's body, my body, as it recites and carries on. So I describe my body as it relates some silly adventure or mystical, quixotic sally. That is how my Cavafi or Seferi poems come about, by watching the tv of my life; seeing the body relate to the forces around it. I watch the body and write poems to Seferi and to Cavafi.

The Brooklyn cousin, Henry Miller, has defined guidelines for the Greece that will lead the world in its search for harmony. He is always in the middle, among our writers who have a lot to say. He has said the leaders are always the artists, the poets, the musicians. He says they are here. The artists were there in his Greece of the ealy '40's. They are here now in the world of mtv, magazines, fashion, writing and so on, both here and in Greece. Art always leads us to the future for good or for ill. Of course, I listen to a narrow band of the Greek past, that represented by Cavafy. I make believe he is talking. I late-20th century the poor guy. His is often a threnody, a lamentation. Here is "Lies," a piece I wrote as a reaction to Cavafy.

A man rose to take his place among men.

He spoke in elegant sentences and wore fine threads.

He spoke to the many about what they wanted to hear.

One day he fell on his emptyness and took a bad spill.

From that day on, he spoke no more.

In dim light he mulls his fate, recalls roses flung him.

His mind is on the other world that waits his arrival.

Oh, dear God, do you know how I have suffered?

I must admit here the poem is a low blow. Cavafi infuriates me so often that I had to get back at him. His figures are so hopeless, so vain, so self-inflated. And he ambles about them, armed with a pin, and says," take this, you stupid fool!" He ungasses them and they fall in a heap to the floor. He is playing with our innocent souls. We all imagine we are the center of the universe, our little careers, Mercedy cars, the lump on our chin that may be cancerous. That may cut off a career that has brilliance written all over it.

I always think of our great ones, alive yet. Tomlin, Robin Williams, Clintons both, Jackson, Jordan, tv's footballer-commentator, John Madden. Well, they just talk or they play but it is the right talk or play for the right time. Lily and the telephone, Robin and anything he does, Michael when he wails. They do what Cavafi does all the time. THey deflate us, show us how silly we are and how totally hopeless the human endeavor is. My poem above is that sort of thing. We really are nothing and imagine we are more. Our artists are always reminding us of this, whether their name is Chaplin or Cosby, Roseanne or Dianna. It is in the area of art that we will find deliverance. And Cavafi delivers for me. He has the story of the dissolute young man on the junkheap, the mother still waiting for the son who is at the bottom of the sea, the skin stripped by monsters with shiny eyes. He tells of kings who disappear into the throng, of queens who go into exile gladly because they are serving their cities as hostages. He laments over young men whose body smell does not leave his nostril. On and on. He drives me crazy with all his hopeless persons. His Nero who is gonna get it from Galbas. We know it, but that bastard, Nero, doesn't. Cavafi would be able to write the programs for the "Simpsons," or for the show,"NYPD." The daimon called creation never leaves the earth. It dies not. The thing just relocates and gives that terrorist, Henry Miller a shove, and it does the same for the storyteller that is Cavafi. My little poem exposes me, a silly and foolish human, who imagines but knows nothing, who is amid greatness and sees nary a thing. I am in life but I am barely able to fancy the creation I know is in the giants, Miller, Seferi, Cavafi. I am thinking now about my fall, in the parking lot of the Wellesley Library, where I dislocated my shoulder. It still hurts.

Cav just wails in the most mellifluous language. He does so in his historical poems to flesh out his characters, to remind us there is a Greek history. The history is of more than battles and dates. It is a history of humans like us. He overlays his historical sensibilities with a self-pity. He sits in the dark and feels sorry for himself. His poems are confessions. I really don't like that weakness in him or in myself. I find I imitate him so much I can't tell him from me. I give you now, "Alone." I suspect there is a smirk on my face as I relate this poem. It is kind of silly. A poor bloke, me, suffers such punishment in a few lines, all at my own hands. Well, I wrote it as an exercise, so it doesn't have to be profound. I feel I squeezed a lot of meats into the sausage to overdo the Cavafian style, but it was so much fun. I wonder if it makes the master mad. Hope so.

I sit before the candle and remember

the days gone by, when I could feel

passion that tore me apart.

Now the memories intrude,

another day, a miserable day,

until thought carries me

to another level, to poesy,

to dreams of old days,

old lust and passion,

on fevered sheet and the

way the love unfolded.

This is the sense of Cavafy. To look at the past, learn from it, a solitary. Face life in the face. Listen up. If the poet cannot handle his own history, his own biography, he will be unable to understand the sweep of Hellenic history and its influence on the world. First, know thyself. Then, know thy culture, thy Hellenism. The 1990's poet, me, tells the observer, the one who knows to see Cavafi, to conserve what is valuable; history, gods, the biography of one's self. It is all valuable, so have experience, young ones, and live to tell it. Be sure to tell it pretty. Style, that is the key and you never see a Cavafi drool in public. Never see him stumble, use a wrong word. His style is that of the great Astaire, as he tells us the poem about the sick sailor or about a jeweller who hoards his best work. In older life, you, young one, can look back on your own experience. Skill is sacred. Don't waste it. Find inspiration. Time is fleeting. Use it. Live. Dare to.

Cavafy is pure and special. He is my touchstone for the moment. I think, maybe, for the rest of this life I am living. I see him all around me. He does need to be heard. One-hundred proof Cavafy. Here is the poem any merchant of the spirit loves, "The Store's." To set the record straight, one can see this is Hisself speaking. Hizoner, the Mayya, The Mayah. He's up there for me with the Babe, with Mayor Curley of Boston and the tidy, Ted Williams. The piece I will read is so neat, nice to just hear it. Cav, himself, is so tidy and neat. He saves these little pieces of string, hoards the best booze in the back of the closet for when a really interesting visitor will call. He saves our culture, the Hellenic one, with a furious passion that locates itself between the lines of his writing. He warns of the constant dangers, that death will come early to us, before we realize our potential. He is a complete artist, whom Seferi tells us, gave every ounce for his art. His artifice and his stealthiness, his secretive stance, his blank face, don't let them fool you. His passion seeps out at every step, as he teaches us to be responsible to the world. His jewels are today's. They are ours. He willed them to every countryman, to every human who will join us, to the stars, to the Ionian ghost-gods. Thank you, Kurie Constantine.

He wrapped 'em with care, with order,

in green, costly silk.

They are roses in ruby, lillies of pearl,

violets of amethyst. Their value, he judges.

His will operates. He sees them pretty.

Not as one observes them in nature,

did he study them. In the safe they'll stay.

Samples of his daring labor, of his skill.

At the store should some customer come in,

he removes from their sheath, other things and sells

first-class baubles, bracelets, chain, necklaces, rings.

The currency he uses is his blood. It is no accident that he chooses precious gems to fashion his mercantile adventure. He's not talking about yo-yo's or housewares. Cavafy is a kind of interior decorator, one who renders the soul in 3D. He is ever on duty, 25 hours a day. You need the extra hour, just to be sure. What he does is play with the reader, the one who will read carefully. I feel I am that type, as he instructs me on how to carry out my daily rounds. He teaches me how to live, in other words. I need to approach him playfully in order to share a bit of his light. If I were totally serious, I could never approach him to learn. That is why I kid a bit or tease when I do Cavafi. The same with Seferi, except that his presence really bowls me over with its gore. I can't sidle up to him and fool one bit with his work. I just solve that problem by thinking of him, the person Seferi, and then I find I can just plain love him. He has the warmth, the kindness, the encyclopedic knowledge, of everything Greek. He has a thing for American jazz, literature, especially our black artists, musicians and writers. He is so warm, as is his sister, Jeanne. He is a joy to look at. I make him human but am not really close to him. With Cavafi, though, one finds he is so open for communication that he literally drags you into the orbit of his thoughts and feelings.

Cavafi covers all the bases. He does love, death, aloneness, ridicule, Hellenism. He is a Babe Ruth sort of person who stops at nothing to communicate. He is outsize, bigger than the life around him. I am not sure the Babe is the right person to compare him with, but he is so damn big, in the way Cavafi is.

There is no-one I have found in my search amid the Greek miracle who compares. Of course, so many of my countrymen agree and I am such a conformist that their opinion affects me too.

He is the complete baseball player whose work I dip into anytime to find a gem. Ever careful, he is willing to share the sight of the gem with you. It is hard to compare him with any contemporary of mine, so what I will try to do is talk around his skills a bit.

Imagine someone who is desperate to share a learning with you. Like a child that goes around with a pointing finger. It says over and over, "look at that!" This is surely a child that just discovered the world and how wonderful it is. I remember the first one we had, my little Laura, doing that. My kid tottered about the house pointing and declaiming this wonder at the glorious world of the everyday variety. My wife and I talk about it to this day. It was so funny and so very wonderful. Cavafi is so wise and, at the same time, so child-like. He constantly discovers the world. Daily, he does it. His method is simple; silently seeing in Greek. Certainly the Greek language helps, but it is the slight tilt to the universe, with him silent, that really does it. He's a bit cocked, as others have described the angle of his view. His angle, his view, his obsession, his capacity for hard work, his love of life, for humans-in-life, is what does it. He may have been vain, selfish, ugly, difficult, cheap, but so what. If he was unkempt in later life, I don't care. How could I? Giants come in all sizes and shades. Cavafi happens to be of my blood. If he had been of any other ethnic or racial grouping, I would still find and adore his work. The Greek tie just makes it a bit more personal. The language was my first as a child, and it has the style and grace I have referred to elsewhere.

To sum, his commitment is total. He is for, not ever against. He meets you halfway in the dark, if you will. He has on that bemused look. So, be easy and free, when you do approach him. He likes that and may bring out the better liquor to honor your visit, my friend.

He comes and he goes like a song in my head. He's here and he's not. Light a candle. He flicks on and then off.

Enough of this hero stuff. Let's do "King Demetrios." In the preface to the poem, Cavafi has quoted Plutarch on the life Demetrios led. It is three lines of explanation before the work begins and goes, "Unlike a king, like an actor, he dons dull cloak, instead of royal one, and in secret, he went away."

Cavafy often goes back to central casting to find a person, the one he is looking for. He instructs unfailingly by bringing to us on earth the character who can do the job. He comes back in tow with a person who is proper for the work at hand. For me, that is what makes him of eternal use to humans. So vain and petty a man as Cavafy was, he was so great and so generous. Hard to figure. Here is Demetrios, straight from some forgotten page of Greek history.

When they dumped him, the Macedonians did,

and showed they preferred Pyrrhos,

the king Demetrios, (big

was his spirit,) not a bit, did they say,

did he show himself like a king. He went and

removed the gold costumes he had on,

and the leg buskins he threw away,

they all in purple. In simple cloth

he dressed fast and took off,

making just like the actor

who when the performance ends,

changes suits and goes away.

Silence closes in. Maybe death, or stasis-in-life. Remember not to forget. Don't.