DIMITRIS LYACOS

Dimitris Lyacos

(was born in Athens in 1966. His trilogy Poena Damni (Z213: Exit, Nyctivoe,

The First Death) has been performed extensivelyacross Europe

and tThe English version is out from Shoestring Press, UK. and sculpture

installation of Nyctivoe opened in London and toured Europe

in 2004-2005. A contemporarydance performance based on the same

book is currently showing in .Z213: Exit (extract)Tell those who were

waiting not to wait none of us will return. The sky is leaving again,

the newspapers rot in the corridor,the same trees pass again but darker

before us, the people who wrench thdoors looking for a place,

those who are coming in at the next stop. The light from outside cutting

the evening in strips,harsh evenings that fall among strangers,the story

shatters within you, fragments,lost in the ebb of this time,

that dissolve one into the other before you fall asleep.And the snail hurries

to go back on its tracks, a tale you remember unfinished,

wrinkles thatstill hold a colour on memory’s transient seed,

birds that awake the dew on their wings and you set off with them

into the white frozen sky, but you wake and are baked again.

Not the fever,the remembrance of sorrow exhausts you,

you don’t know why, before you are well awake and the barren

feeling comes back to your hands,the rest suddenly vanishes,

you are one recollectiona broken box which is emptying,

after the tempest this calm, you search for support,

get up like an old man,feel cold, remember birds’ wings

magistrates’ sticks decorated with feathers the bones

of an angel, sink again images and words monotonous as prayer.

Translated from the Greek by Shorsha Sulliva
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He spoke I will pursue I will overtake
I will glut my soul of the flesh the melted all

Saddle on bloodied wages
Covered them the whispering.

Before it it will be night let us chant to
In the giving

They fruit as the hoar frost on the ground
Barks of the hounds on the scent

Tree wihch when they had cast into the water
And it was made sweet
But left of it until the moornig. And
His bred worms and stank below the water line
Full bowls and they could not drink
And inelted all execpt one. And the bones under the sun like gypsan

And he set of out the desert

Passages and encamped there.
Grant us arms stretching out to the water
Gods which shall go belove us
skipwereck of the under the moutain