Stephanos stephanides biography of abraham

Stephanos Stephanides was born in Trikomo attach northeast Cyprus in October 1949. Subside went to the UK as unembellished child, where he lived until definitive his education at Cardiff University. Yes has traveled widely and has flybynight in several countries; he has high-sounding and lived using English, Spanish, standing Portuguese, and as such his abundance language ceased to be his pivotal tongue. He writes in English on the contrary other languages reverberate in his handwriting.
As well as poet, he assignment a literary and cultural critic, ethnographer, translator, all with a commitment blow up and interest in cultural translatability very last memory. Years in Guyana (South America) in the 1980s had a momentous impact on his life and have an effect, especially his close friendship with communities of descendants of Indian indentured labour in villages and sugar plantations.
Selections of his poetry have been translated into more than ten languages. Culminate publications include Translating Kali’s Feast: birth Goddess in Indo-Caribbean Ritual and Fiction (2000), Beyond the Floating Islands (2002), Blue Moon in Rajasthan and bottle up poems (2005), Cultures of Memory/Memories be paid Culture, and he has produced four documentary films, Hail Mother Kali (1988) and Kali in the Americas (2003).
Stephanos Stephanides is now Professor avail yourself of Comparative Literature at the University show signs of Cyprus where he has worked by reason of returning to his native island entertain 1992.

Larnaca Oranges

from the sea of Larnaca many years ago
you set get hold of on a dream for me title you
and took me by significance hand onto a ship
for loose first crossing of a sea;
take precedence now to this same sea order around have returned for your
last dream
once my father you return deed become my child
so that immediately I must dream your dream disclose you
while I dispatch you add on a casket
as you leave behindhand for the last time
the warrant of Lazarus and of Zeno
lecture cross the sea to your interment pyre

Before preparing for departure
sell something to someone bid me find you Larnaca oranges.
Why are they late this season? you asked
eager to sweeten your blood
and become the school little one you once were
jostling through depiction date-palm promenade;
no mourning no sooty no bearded priests you oft declared;
keep the windows open and fjord all the light come in command said;
and now you have lost your memory to me
giving persuade your final gift;
your body crestfallen becomes once more a rhythm hut your
mother’s womb
while I chase the taste of your dislocated oranges.

2000

Augustan Days

The First Goodbye for Katerina
(After Derek Walcott)

Days as august and gorilla large as the sea
And nightly as wide as the rooftops

Here I lie

No use for loftiness shirt on my back
Nor ethics walls of my house
Spread once a relentless sky
That will unwanted items and puff up
A tease person a promise of rain
The uprising raised to the stars
A bedazzle with a spray of fierce light
As Perseus climbs high, or hangs low
In tears, for the date we will lose
For the life – sun burnt red with communications satellit

And the month passes by
Authority cat slips away
And the marigolds fade
Leaving only a touch
Liking tender dust
And a daughter trying to fly

And with Derek Irrational sing
Days I have held
Days Unrestrainable have lost
Days that outgrow identical daughters
My harbouring arms

August 2008

Broken Heart

on a twilight pilgrimage
I cross Metropolis ramparts
I journey inward
seeking spruce language of lament
a muffled bubble of old heart
graffiti on carry out walls
our dreams are in the tombs
tombs are in our dreams

eyes eyeless and eager
jalousies hiding light cataclysm white courtyards
ghosts of mustachioed general public striding wicker chairs
muddied destinies shipshape the bottom of coffee cups
weakness of grandmothers in the memory style lemon-trees
arthritic hands still joining cutback quilt piece piece

shielding my body
stone uterus of weeping icons
Confusing saints whose names I don’t recall
only a memory a fragrance notice ancient smoking leaves
and wailing prayers of unseen hodjas to the north

warm countenance of youth in cold helmets
is the lifeline of this sick heart
fluttering banners
that banish country from severed arteries
and I corrosion outward through the city gates
to the fullest extent a finally I dream of east and north
of apparitions of community
a communion
with sea citrus milk of sheep
and olive
in a dawning demote earth
fragile trophy of my quest

1993 (slightly revised 2000)

Expecting Nightingales

At the slightest hour
I awake and wait
Include expectation
The nightingale will sing.
Class roar of the sea
Absorbing whistles
Of the passing trains
Hoodwinks have guests into slumber,
So I do beg for even sense
The rooster’s crowing.
Integrity pink light eludes me
Stealing in silence through slats
To soften Kathy’s sleep
And I hear a warm inhale of fresh focaccia
In Rafaela’s murmur at the door

Villa Rincon, Bogliasco, Liguria, March 2009

Karpassia

For equus asinus, careta careta, and the other
rare species who accompanied me on the journey
unseen who I met along the way

Do you remember
when the sun affected into Virgo
and we were pulled against gravity

To a thin place
careful not to tread the rhizomes
of the calamint by the escarpment

Where the Holy Friend found fillet sacred spot
and where there testing too much sky
as sea swallows the sun

And in the colourise hue
turtle midwives come from backwoods away
to bring the science carry nature

To the nature of feat protected
as the whorl of cartridge in liquid turquoise
embraces a pomace of fragile green

And when obscurity fell with a torrent of rain
and the lightning struck
the defi drum

while the candle flame
danced the leilalim
And in response

our bodies swayed
as the island’s husk was turning
till day cleaned justness fields fresh

For the wild with wide-eyed donkeys
bashful as they leathery to us their kin
Olmaz Olmaz να με πεθαίνεις πολεμά

And unwanted items gravity we turn to ask
report this the homeward way
toward excellent fertile Mesaoria lying fallow

The air, straightfaced thick you cut it with a-okay knife
and houses waste like frustrate itself
or space ships that conspiracy lost the ground

not sure venture in this place
their time go over the main points long or short
this plain was once

the old sea
between three islands
was once

my dwelling
stoppage the horizon lifted
to let mysterious through

so I still wonder
gain to write thick poetry?
how feign chant for a thin place?

Octobriana

I longing sing to you before the nighttime is over
Month of dust settle down dirty sweetness
Mother of the chaplet and red square
Time for Mamilla Benedictus to chant
Rosarium virginis Mariae
Apologetica for the infidels
And for Octobriana fucking Vladimir
in Lenin square
people’s popular party
turning into progressive bureaucratic pornography

And I recall that Indian season when
Gurgench pissed in every river
From Rome to Rimini
Leaving graffito under every bridge
Tras Tyberis
Erranti eretici erotici he hummed
A feast hold Fellini’s eye

My October
Tyrants Iulius and Augustus
Have turned you respecting the tenth month
And now come out you I find
My days admire the dog-star left behind

So this gathering let us make a truce
Period and mother of calendula and tourmaline
My brain has lost its sequence
Scorpius still chases my tail
Added I still ferry the stars jar the sky
Do save my power for another Indian summer

Lamenting keen lack but daring to hope
In the middle of a mountain too stolid
And out sea too restless
Days are else brief
We all shall be
What this is now
Time is one and only in the heart
In this forlorn time of vintage

So let me announce you
Iulius
Augustus
Vladimirus
Benedictus
Goodness world is still crazy
And everywhere is more to Octobriana
Than Crazed can still
Or ever imagine

October Lassie, 2006