Zero Year

Seferi says, "I am not a philosopher. My job is not to deal with abstract ideas, but to listen to what the things of the world are telling me, to see how they interact with my soul and my body and to express them." This is a quote from the "Charioteer," a Greek-American Journal, volume, 27, Page 175.

He does that well. Using body, soul and mind, ears and eyes to hear the world talk to him. His finest poetic writing for me is the "Three Secret Poems, " a set of verses that light up the sky. I find it a deeply personal experience to be privileged to hear one of my own talk like that. I cannot begin to say how much I love Seferi, how much I admire him, how much I feel he means to us as Greek People. I am agog.

The things of the world, they get tricky. That is, when you hear the poetic voices. There is a funny line from another poet, Vrettakos. "and the rabbit erect heard the infinite." It seems the Greeks are sort of etherial. That they are, certainly. Dreamers, wastrels, fools. But kind of interesting to me. As they have the habit of explaining my life in 1995 in ways that make sense. So what, that they hear voices.

Please hear, Yannis Papadopoulos' line in the poem, "Flight 903," from the Charioteer, Volume 15.

"All who arrive at airports believe in postcards."

This world is not what it seems. The magazine ads promise youth, sex and the like, if we use the proper products. Airports are where we go to get off..... to dream in the clouds, as we are Boeing all over the known world. We are into illusion; into denial, as they say.

That's why I like the line, "all who arrive at airports believe in postcards." It summarizes for me the American Dream, in a positive way. That we are all great dreamers, traveling about in space, in our dreams. Oh, you can see it in the negative sense too. That we are such fools, never realizing that salvation comes not to those who travel, but to those who stay home and contemplate their garden or perhaps their navel. We, in the West, are always on the move. We try to find meaning out of our many daily acts, and for me the line of Papadopoulos summarizes the whole thing. Our restless sense, the ability we have for coloring our universe to make it palatable.

We seek excess in our fantasy, tv lives. Big muscles, organs, guns. In unusual combinations of the above. This morning, in August, 1995, on the tv network, a 20 year old was talking about how she went to a 70 year old's house and seduced him, to guffaws, shrieks and huzzahs from a vast, multicolored audience. All cheered on by a microphoned, sleek, slim, styled woman, who asked embarrassing questions. It sells, my baby. That passes for what is real today. I think the happy couple will be getting married soon.

This is your world. Love it.

I've got a celebration to do. Happy new birth. Greek culture. Zero year, 2000.

It all begins with Seferi. How can we moderns know the truth from lie, photo from postcard? Where lies truth? Where a direction, that is suitable? For me. It is in Seferi.

I read Seferi to know what to do. I sense his energy propels his own, his Greek people. It does me.

To the next shore, so to speak.

To the pristine century.

What he suggests is it's up to us to decide our future. The matter of whether the glass is half full or half empty. How we can keep filling it. We need to make that determination. Then act on it.

To Seferi, as a Greek, there is only self-determination. I shall read pieces of the work he calls, "Three Secret Poems." The second poem is "On Stage," and he talks about his being a kid and swimming. Then about being a young adult, looking for
"skymata sta votsala, patterns in the pebbles." You can find these lines in the fourth section of "On Stage," near the bottom.

He'll bend your ear. Will the ever patient Seferi. Now he brings us to the "thalasinos yeros," the sea elder-the old man of the sea-the sea -ish senior, the Estimable Elder of the Waters.

Anyway, this old guy. Some kind of a god or something. Something from ancient times. Some sort of mythology.

So, Seferi goes;

He's saying what was said to him by this bug in his ear. This old guy who is talking to him.

"I am the place that is yours.

Maybe I ain't anybody.

I'm not anyone,

but

I can be that which you want.

I can be whatever you wish or please."

Get it? This giant of the waves is in league with the master. To grant his very own wish. Not for a Whirlpool or Toshiba or new Saturn car. No. Seferi has some other thing in mind. It is the constant need of the human. Any human. Transubstantiation. By what ever means. He'll take it on the cloud of poetry. Less on the cross of the Christ. Not on a TWA flight into the sunset or a trip in a bottle of Absolut Vodka. Not on a chance piece of crack, from the 1988 streets of Detroit, where the Chambers brothers flooded the joint with very fine cocaine.

Seferi takes the art route, so to speak. To get off. Like the ancients did. After all, he is one of them. They are one of him.

Seferi runs on two themes; for me, at least. These themes come from what the old ones tell him. In the piece called "On Stage, " in the book, "Three Secret Poems," he sets the stage for the cataclysm that is the last section of the book. The two, blended themes I am referring to, are freedom and responsibility. These two are his concern for us as a people. If they seem to you contradictory, well, they are. Solving the puzzle of how to have both in contemporary society is what this piece of mine is about. It is also one of the interpretations possible for understanding "Three Secret Poems." Seferi's last and greatest work.

It is in me to go sideways to go forward. I try to carry a message over the Greek airways, the Greek network, that we may travel apiece together. Ancient Greek tv, here.

We never leave alone the two themes, freedom. Responsibility. Katheikon.

Please try to keep them in mind, as we go on the mystery tour. In "On Stage," 6, he says these lines,

Pou tha eisai sty stygmy pou tha 'rthei

etho s'afto to theatro to fos?

That means in American English, or street English," where you gonna be, the minute the light comes on the very screeen of your neighborhood theatre? You. I'm talking to you!

He asks the very American question, "are you gonna be in that number?" When the saints go marchin' in?

You will be there, or you won't. You Greek People. Will you forget the ancient stage? Aeschylus, the bawdy Aristophanes? Will you visit Ephesus in Asia Minor, snap some trite photos and say you went there when you go back home to Peoria, Illinois to bore the hell out of your friends? Will you forget the culture or save it? Will you mouthe the lines or watch cnn. Read the ancients or Newsweek? Won't you join us in that number? This is Seferi calling, transatlantic call, wanting to talk to you.

It is no small matter. How can we drag our carcasses to 2000? How can we get awake enough to pull a few of our countrypersons along a ways?

You see, Seferi is on a few levels for me. Certainly he is weaving the shroud that will come to cover him on his death. The three major poems in his book do that. He is writing his own memorial. He doesn't want to bother anyone else, so he does it himself. He is so neat.

He dies and the ashes of Seferi get strewed by the children. To the winds. The matter is discussed in the poems. He goes out in a cloud of smoke like some damn stage magician.

But you see, there is always more. Another level to enjoy. Seferi is not selfish. He may have some traits that are bad; I don't know him that well. I don't know the traits that are bad. Maybe he snorts when he goes to speak. Maybe his shirts are not properly ironed. I don't know, but I know he is not selfish. He is into sharing, like all great thinkers. His print is for us all. All people. Who seek a collective salvation. While he talks universally, he also talks about Greeks.

It is plain. He is always plain. It comes down to Katheikon, responsibility. To every thing, to everyone, to all time. The world over. Our special concern on the stage of the world is to keep the human free and whole, moving in the right directions. If the Greeks go right, so may the world. There is nothing complicated in this. The human must be free to be whole. When this is the case, when freedom reigns, every ounce must be put to art, to glorification of culture, of goodness. World art, Greek art, all art in this time, in the old time as well. When Greeks do art, when all humans try art, then the freedom and the responsibility join and the world is frucified. That is good. To make flowers and dreams from the stuff in our heads. Seferi indicates it is good to create. That is how we can get into the next century, as Greeks. If we do art and damn the consequences. Stay Greek and forget money and false dreams.

He throws me the gauntlet. Do you want to be in that number? Will you be a Greek among the Greeks? Will you not join Ritso, Vrettakos, Seferi? Of course.

As an average Greek, a pedestrian on the sidewalk of contemporary America, as a Greek who knows only a little of the old ways, I say I am not up to it.. He, Seferi, says in reply, "You're all I've got." He then gives a line from "On Stage, " 5, where he reports from the front lines that

"Martyres then uparhoun pia, yia tipote. Witnesses don't exist any more, for anything."

I really don't understand this, but it appears on surface to be true. No-one knows Seferi, among those in my acquaintance, until I tell them about him. I go up to Greeks on the street and ask them and they don't know. His work goes out of print in the American tongue. I hear real Greeks from over there don't get into him either. I can't understand it. I love him so much. He is with me every morning I get up? How could he not? He is water. Bread. Dream. Essential! He witnesses but no-one cares. He has that figured out. And when you think about it, all sorts of bad things occur all the time and no-one says a thing.

Only poets know and say so. Only painters, storytellers, honest people who cannot be still. They are ignored or killed. Mostly, the last is not even necessary. The voices of right are just ignored. No witnesses , anymore, indeed.

So be it. Remember , twin pillars of the new Greek culture, 2000. Same as old. Responsibility. Freedom. No contradiction. Do not even think it. We are free to be responsible.

We are free, thus becoming responsible to all. We do not discriminate against any known group.

We don't make money. We make art. We write history, herstory. Take fotos. Do vids. Make movies. Design magazines. Write prose, poems, dirges, obituaries, praise songs. Make jokes, write praiseful stories about American heroics; Robin Williams, Lily Tomlin. Tell lies and tall tales. Write songs the way Elyty does.

Try this.

We are, first, human, gloriously human, and thus responsible. The person must be free to decide how to be. When free, the human is always doing the right thing, and that involves being responsible. The two traits go together naturally. Seferi suggests in his work that we are here to be of assistance. Those who are free and who care. His poetry suggests the question phrased in his polite fashion. "How may I help you?" How may one learn not to pillage, steal , rape or deny?

When these things are said, Seferi adds a bit more. He is about to take a trip. The Greek , as you know, is a traveler of sorts. Seferi has always had his bags packed. He has traveled the world over as a diplomat for Greece. But this is to be his last run to light, his ultimate trip. I mean all this metaphorically, of course.

Seferi hurtles into the sun, to fry, on the hottest day of the year, in the summer solstice. "Summer Solstice," is the title of the third set of poems of his book, "Three Secret Poems." His imagery is unmistakable to one who understands the sun of Greece. I am an American, however , and his meaning doesn't get through to me. I haven't the vaguest idea how terrible the mesimeriny sun can be. The mid-day sun. I've only seen it a few times. He, a lot more often. Especially the sun of his youth, the lizard slithering across the baked rock, and other things he describes in his poems.

One comes to the dilemma of the diaspora. Really, I don't understand what the hell Seferi is talking about. His sense of the Greek sun is something I will never get. The linguistic and cultural gap is immense and intense.

That never bothers me. The impossible is not known to me, as an impediment. To accept what is impossible is to accept and acknowledge defeat. Defeat is sure death. That much is in common to us both. Both Seferi and me. We fight against what they call impossible.

To recognize a wall , to know what is not possible, to accept it, is sure death, defeat. We try to be unbowed, unbroken, unafraid. Try to remain undefeated by the impossible, by the void of death and life. That is really what the poems he does are about. How to be courageous in the face of uncertainty. How to put up with the knowledge of sure defeat.

I know, as a Greek does know, that linguistic and cultural differences are there, but not to be worried over. I just blissfully go on, imagining what I want and undoubtedly misreading the Master. He comes of a different world than I, but he is still talking to me, even though I miss a lot of what he is saying. I neither know the Greek language well, nor understand the daily Greek meanings his word abounds in. I go on because he is there and I keep trying to understand him to the extent I can.

I would argue that his third poem, Summer Solstice, has a message for us in the diaspora.. I think that Seferi cares to tug at our trouser leg, as we go squealing into the next century. He tells us STAY GREEK. I swear he does . I swear it. His voice is low, but persistent. His approach low key.

He says, here's how. How to stay Greek. If I am wrong in my reading of him, I am in great big trouble..

Because if this guy is just worried about his personal salvation, and cares not a damn about his people, I have managed to misread him grievously. I feel his poem is directed at us in the diaspora, we Greeks on the five continents, far from the source , the place called Greece.

There are some my doubts as I move to the task of interpretation.. I go to the job at hand. To tell you why Summer Solstice has lines in it that can change the world.

Why Summer Solstice reads to me as a prescription for saving Greek culture in the dark days ahead.

I am so certain he is telling us this, I would be willing to make a wager.

He uses the image of the threshing floor. Here, everything goes to be ground up. It is the sacred place where death is celebrated. For to Seferi, death and the place where our death is to occur, is a place to honor. Here he is, on the threshing room floor, the locus of death for every human now here alive.

ola t'alethoun y mulopetres

kai ginountai astra

All gets ground up by the millstones

and they become stars.

I believe he is telling us that our lives now are in the maws of death, of consumer confusion, of foolish living, of life as it is, in this year, 1995. We simple Greeks, I mean simple in the positive sense, we innocent Greeks, get ground up and spit out into the air. We just die and we rot. In Astoria, in Boston, in Chicago. Living as we do our anonymous lives that get dominated by work, work and family. Then more work.

But I reread the lines above. It is in us who follow Seferi , those who believe in the old ways, to believe that we get reborn as stars. It is his way of saying that to stay Greek or to act human and responsible will be its own reward. That it will lead the individual to good things and will benefit the world.

I believe that adhering to Greek values will benefit us as we reach 2000. To reach the future in tact, ground up as a star, bringing light to the world of tomorrow. To get ground up, us all , and to reappear as a soft Greek light in the decades that will follow ours. The true Greek , Seferi seems to say, is fodder for the Greek culture of tomorrow.

If we inhabit the cnn world, the acerbic universe of Roseanne, the universe of fact and statistic, the uzi and the bomb, so be it. The star will shine, still. It is a promise from one of the great voices of the Greek culture. A promise. Just trust in Seferi. I do and am never in doubt. The verse is a promise. All we gotta do is be in that number. That Greek number. He promises us the stars. Only we have to stay Greek.

In "Summer Solstice 3", Seferi is sad. He speaks of the city where panderers and whores peddle dirty charms, of the maid who gets mounted by the bull, of the poet pelted by shit by brats. There is no avoidance of reality in his work. He lives in it. His special skill is that he can supercede it in his verse.

What happens, is we Greeks get tied about with our kids, our spouses, our cnn. Forest Gump. We worry, to stay thin, young, rich and healthy, like everybody else.

Yet, on top of all that we worry about the Muse; that gosh darned muse; the poetry and art of our blessed Greek culture. Our old way of looking at things. Our way that looks odd today.

We are the third man out. Third woman out. The fit is bad. We do not manage to bureaucratize well, nor do we get socialized properly by the social forces charged with the duty of making us whole and adult in the western world. We stay round in a universe where humans are square. We end up as uneasy citizens of this country or that, of the country we are expected to fold into. Australian, American, Canadian, Zairan. That is because we keep hearing the voice that is old, the old voice. Now through the pen of Seferi.

I let him speak for himself. I gather the book is out of print, that has these lines. Maybe you can xerox them and send them to a friend. That our Seferi not get lost under all the tv and newsprint of our current day. Please, to make a copy of his lines and send them to a friend, or even to an enemy.

"Takseidepses, eithes polla fegaria pollous ylious

agikses nekrous kai zontanous

enioses ton pono tou palikariou

kai to voggyto tys gynaikas

tyn pikra tou agourou paithiou

oti enioses soriazetai anipostato

an then embistefteis ... touto to keno"

It means, "You traveled , saw a lot of moons, many suns

touched dead and living people

sensed the pain of the young stalwart

and the moaning broil of the woman

the bitter attitude of the callow child

what you sensed falls into an unsubstantial heap

if you have not any faith..... in this void of our lives."

His lines argue that we need have faith in the whole package of life, including the passage to the outer edge of time, when we must meet up with our death and say hello. He says to the Greek to get used to the void, to death. He argues for the value of the experience that he implies will be with us when we travel to the other side. It is very like the Greek poet to make verse of death and the uncertainty it holds, but it is also so Greek to hear him speak of the journey, what is called the living odyssey. He talks of the journey that is peculiarly Greek. This is from Summer Solstice, 9.

"Milouses gia pragmata pou then ta vlepan

ki aftoi yelousan.

omos na lamneis sto skoteino potamo

pano nera

na pygaineis ston agnoymeno thromo

sta tyfla, peismataris

kai na gureveis logia ryzomena

san to polyrizo liothendro

afyse ki' as yeloun.

You spoke of things which they saw not

and they laughed

But you do row the dark river

over water that is rough

go on the unknown road

on the blind, so to speak, oh one with the bile

and you look for words, words, rooted as they are

like the manyrooted olive tree

let 'em, leave 'm laughing."

He says not to despair. He says that to me all the time. Just as Makryannis says it to him at all times. There be no worry, no hurry. Think , my child, of what you hold. The Great culture of the Greeks. Know us.

Last in his poem, Summer Solstice, the great clash of cymbals. They come in the last two stanzas in number 14 of Summer Solstice.

Seferi is alone in his thoughts. It is a distillation of his being, his whole life, that he comes to with these lines. Call the kids, indeed.

"Fonakse ta paithia na mazepsoun ty stakty

kai na ty speiroun

oti perase perase sosta

Ki ekeina akomy pou then perasan

prepei na kaoun

touto to mesymeri

Call the kids to gather up the ash

and to sow it

what passed passed in a right way

and those things which did not pass

have to get burned

this very noon time"

Seferi becomes Mr. Clean. He has to wipe the slate clean , his own, so the time can move forward. To leave room for new birth. For new Greeks and for new people who think about the Greek way and are not of Greek blood. He is inclusive always, speaking of the human path and not just the local one he represents so eloquently. He argues for the cleansing effect time enacts, and does it with the image of the Greek sun, the one that terrifies and provides salvation, too.

This is of Seferi, telling about the needs he has , as he approaches the future.

I turn now to the other traveler, Odyseas Elytis, to finish my thoughts on the zero year, around the corner.

He says in his essay, Open Papers, the following.

"I want the first glimpse of the world. There are so many things no-one has managed to explore. This is on page 44.

Such wonder, such innocence, such verve. It is in our poets, along with the grandness, special to Seferi. A package of wonders the little Greeks go around with. Muttering or gesturing as they remember a line , a random line of Seferi, Elytys, a hoary line of Palamas, of Pindar, of Papathiamandy.

But, lo, on the next page of Eytys' essay he slips back into the current reality, the daily reality, the one that is so troubling to Seferi. Says Elyty.

"Come, you who knows, let's do it one more time! In this horrid, frigid city. Can we show people their immortal side once more?

Look, look; the dead- I do not fear the dead, I do not pity them-

Death shall have no dominion.

It is in our future. We are all in our future!

Let's go! Music, horses, lights!"

This outpouring is a confident exhortation by our greatest living poet , the most recent in the string, and one might react with , bravo.

Elyty says they can have their killing, thefts, interrogations. Poets have to travel to
"that second condition, to walk on air and water both." Page 37 of the above work. That fairyland , I live in. I watch Seferi burn up in the summer sun. In the place, Greece where too Elytys urges us on with horses, lights and music.

Do keep spirit. Be of good cheer. We will make it to the next step. We have some good company. Synthrofia or parea, in Greek. We are goaded a bit. We need it. I'm off to meet the next century, the coming millenium. Zero year approaches. The last line is Elyty.

"When shall we, all of us, feel how deep, serious , charming , life is?"

a philosopher. My job is not to deal with abstract ideas, but to listen to what the thing