The Smoky Metropolis

THE FOUR ELEMENTS Hold the unattainable the most precious ancient find of time in your hands if only for a moment A museum in the Present Tense, open tubes and butterflies, sleepless in an olive-toned light of moist texture Turn to the air for the depths of sensation as the day turns to golden dust in the earth’s hourglass

You transgress the heavens utterly sorrowful The bloodied spring burns in the magnificent mirror of the whole Genesis, an unknown distance Unformed, you still wait in Memory An ark rocks slowly… Is it the law that I imagine within you

I am the other myself These are my dreams which in reality are the others, those who separate me or unite me at a personal station The morning lies drugged in the dawn It is snowing in black light within this vast substance of consciousness I am a lost city Two black threads of time I reject the stony seconds a rhythmic clock dripping before the eyes of strangers Two black threads that travel within themselves ceaselessly slipping invisibly between the small towers of matter

This is penetrating poetry that brings to the surface and sketches out the great questions of human existence. Tormenting and redemptive thoughts which, with sensitivity and intense personal exploration, define a new order of things.

The Smoky Metropolis, a city of contemporary realism imbued with an awareness of loss. A personal city. A city of the world. A poetic journey through different realms of action, exploration, and uncompromising realisations from the first to the last mile of the collection. “My life was never verified/in reality, I wasn’t even myself.” Images of poetry and truth that unfold: “The built river sounds/ in the distance, running.” Constant questions. Does the Metropolis have borders? Who knows? It has “small joys / upon the field of ashes”, it has political consciousness, “tonight they are handing out injustice in the squares / I will cover your words / and then I will come”. It has smoky experiences. “A moment plucked from my moment / A life plucked from my life / The East is ablaze”. It has sounds, dialogues, echoes, beams of light from its windows. It is the Metropolis that lends its industrial characteristics to its weaknesses. That breathes in its contemporary world, recorded on a “memory card”. Every step in the Smoky Metropolis is a life story. Every hint, a fantastical conclusion. Perhaps it is the only Metropolis that gazes upon its own dome. Unafraid of the mystery. Curious. Self-sufficient in freedom of speech. Elevating its poetic reality to a simple, universal hope

IN THE ESTATES OF THE YELLOW ROSES, fragments of memory come together to form an interpretation of a visible personal world and another, more complex one that is lost in the waters of the past. From India and Egypt to the Laptev Sea, and from the Baltic to the Gulf of Oman and Palestine—these are the places of reference in the poetic chapters of an existential quest whose main component is time. The book is illustrated with six drawings by Academician Manolis Korre, chairman of the Acropolis Monuments Conservation Committee. THE LAPTEF SEA Navigable between August and September Northern land in the Arctic Circle The frozen Gods are reflected in the white The ship of the sea passes through the thick fog calculates the draught calculates the time it must wait 672,000 square kilometres of memory It fades as if it had always been there upon the ice in a time that has stopped with its nameless sailors in this white sea of the deep The blizzard is approaching nature’s beacon fades We are alone 672,000 square kilometres of silence