Nikos Katsalidas, Greece
The Poems
Maternal Temple
A priestess now, she walks to the altar of the fountain, bent,
exposed, deeply absorbed in the waters, she offers
invocations, libations, raises her head shyly to the ceiling of
the sky, covered by God’s offshoots, with naked breast, to
wash, to comb with unction in the healing waters, to
perfume her bosom. Her boobies were quince different in
her youth, that sacrosanct enticing temple of the teat that
nurtured our world. What happened, where has it gone her
left breast? What happened, where has it gone her rosy,
roseate teat, the spout where fits of milk gargled into my
inflamed lips? She takes out her blessed, her holy only
breast now and holds it hard in the lunar fist. The other has
gone, she says, gruesome stabs cutting metastasis’ storm
and maybe bitches ate it down in mortuaries, in vaults. Or,
maybe, professors emeritus experiment with her bosom’s
cells. Unibreasted now the mother stands in her handicap,
she washes her only breast and stuffs it back inside,
because it’s well in there, he has forgotten it and Charon
should not see it. Because, she says, he might have cut it
off as well, the black Charon, when he passed on his black
horse by her alley one day.
Translated by Klety Sotiriadou
The Heraldics of Thrush, Kastaniotis editions, 2008
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Ο ΜΗΤΡΙΚΟΣ ΝΑΟΣ
Τώρα ιέρεια βαδίζει στο βωμό της βρύσης, κάνει δέηση,
The Poet
Nikos Katsalidas was born in Ano Lesinitsa of Theologos, Agioi Saranda. He lives in Athens. He read Literature in Tirana and is a poet, prose writer, essayist and translator. He is a member and honorary member of literary unions and organizations. He has worked as a professor of Literature and as a literary editor for the National Greek Minority Press after the Dictatorship. A fair sample of his poems is included in various world anthologies. He has translated thirty Greek poets and writers in Albanian and is one of the founders of the Organization of the National Greek Minority “Omonoia”. He has served Minister for Human Rights in Albania during 2001-2002, and as Cultural Counselor of the Albanian Embassy in Athens during 2004-2008. He was awarded the highest distinction of Letters “Great Artist” by the President of Albania in 2012.He is a member of Greek Authors’ Society