On the Arc of Light and Silence

Elias Margiolas

• Publisher: AKAKIA Publications
• eBook ISBN: 9781910714881
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

The life experiences and feelings, the frights and agonies of the world are observed and expressed in the simplest, most immediate and succinct way in Margiolas' poetry. Christos Alexiou

"I took up writing, out of a personal need.

To enhance my pace, even a bit.

To understand the dimensions of the world, the responsibility of the Sun.

To withstand the deluge of light and the wisdom of silence.

To listen to the great poets raising life to its height.

To hear the agonizing voice of Dionysios Solomos crying out loud for a free motherland! To hear Elytis apologizing for his century to the light of the Aegean.

To hear the blind Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges shouting his belief that: 'I lost nothing apart from the insignificant surface of things' ". Elias Margiolas

FOREWORD

It is a pleasure and honor for me to introduce Elias Margiolas’ third collection of poems. But before I speak about that collection, I thought it pertinent to summarily refer to his two previous ones so that the reader is offered a more complete assessment about that reflective and deeply emotional poet.

Margiolas published his first collection of poems Melee weapons and Projectiles in 1996, with a foreword by M.G.Meraklis, which was awarded the Academy of Athens first prize for first-time poetry authors. In 2006, the Greek-Italian Chamber published his second collection of poems Of the Small Bear – Dell’ Orsa Minore in both Greek and Italian, translated by Nicola Piedimonte in an artistic edition, along with a CD with reciting of his poets by Anna Synodinou, Dimitris Piatas, Seraphim Fyntanides, Gregoris Valtinos, Telemachus Chytiris, and others.

‘The poet could have been an assailed person’ says Mihalis Meraklis, in his foreword of Margiolas’ first collection. ‘Yet, his voice, despite all the bitterness and agony it presupposes, possesses something that is unassailable’1. This remark may be pertinent to the corpus of Margiolas’ poetry because it expresses the life view of a reflective man, who, despite the loss of his vision, he did not stop envisioning the beauty and the value of life and fight stubbornly for it, with a deep sense of respect, humility and responsibility.

Indeed, in his 290, if I’m not mistaken, Melee weapons and Projectiles verses of his first collection, Margiolas sketches poetically and chants reflectively, with pithy austerity and remarkable dignity, without petty bitterness and taciturn tendencies, that ‘great and primary gift’, which is, as Solomos put it, life2 itself, in a plethora of form, feeling and situations, personal and collective, recur in everyday life, like pure love, the bliss brought by the birth of a child, love that subdues the fear of death, companionship that subdues loneliness, the homeland and the world, full of immeasurable beauty and uncountable memories, the fight for every man’s right to life.

In his second collection, Of the Small Bear with a foreword of poet Vasilis Rouvalis, Elias Margiolas recalls his wife, his children, his friends and all his beloved ones, who were the reason or the cause, because of their happy presence and painful absence, these wonderful poems were written, where feeling and meaning, life experience and dream, bliss and agony, anticipation and disappointment, sound and silence, are articulated in a classical expression in terms of its precision and succinctness. There is the woman, the precious partner in life, with whom he enters into a conversation with exquisite erotic remembrance and tenderness. There are his children, about whom he talks with elation and limitless fatherly affection. There are his friends and comrades in everyday life and social struggles who are recalled with a painful sense of their absence. Yet, in Margiolas’ poetry, the woman, the children, the friends and himself exist in the inexplicable void of the natural world, where the sky, the stars, the sea, the soil, the light and the darkness, the pace and the colors, compose the mysterious and intoxicating miracle of life.

But we all experience this mi...

Table of contents

• FOREWORD
• I‘CONVERSING WITH THE AUGUST STORMS’
• 2‘THE REVOLT OF THE TREES’
• 3‘AT THE BELFRIES OF THE ANGELS’
• 4‘WHEN…’
• 5‘TO MOTHER’
• 6‘WILL WAIT’
• 7‘ALL THAT I WRITE TO YOU’
• 8‘I SUMMONED YOU’ (REQUIEM)
• 9‘THE PERFORMANCE’(LIKE A FAIRYTALE)
• 10SECOND IMAGE
• 11‘I WANT YOU TO BE HERE, THERE…EVERYWHERE’
• 12‘TAKE ME ON A MORNING STROLL…’
• 13‘BE READY’
• 14‘TELL ME WHAT YOU ARE CELEBRATING’
• 15THIRD IMAGE
• 16‘I SOMETIMES PONDER’
• 17‘I TOOK UP READING YOUR HANDS’
• 18‘I TOOK NO HEED OF THE DANAOS’
• 19‘AT THE STREET’
• 20FOURTH PICTURE
• 21‘I WON’T DENY IT’
• 22‘YOU SAY YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR ME’
• 23
• 24‘YOU OUTSIDE’
• 25FIFTH IMAGE
• 26‘HOW DID OUR HOUSE OPEN AND IN SO MUCH SORROW WAS ALLOWED IN’
• 27‘THAT MAN WASN’T FROM AROUND HERE’
• 28
• 29‘THE HIDE-AND-SEEKTHAT FINISHED TOO SOON…’
• 30SIXTH IMAGE
• 31‘RIVERS ARE BORN RED’
• 32
• 33‘MY LIFE IN THREE LINES’
• 34‘NEED, THEREFOREFOR AN EXPLOSION’
• 35SEVENTH IMAGE
• 36‘I STOOPED TO REMEMBERYOUR FACE’
• 37
• 38
• 39‘EVEN IF THEY GIVE LIGHTAND SOUND’
• 40EIGHTH IMAGE
• 41‘A SLOW DRIZZLE WAS SATURATING THE DAY’
• 42‘WE STARTED ON OUR WALK…’
• 43‘FOLLOWING SHADOWS’
• 44‘FOR A SMALL ARCADIA LOST’(Lament for a forest)
• 45NINTH IMAGE
• 46‘ENTERING FROM THE HADRIAN’S GATE’
• 47‘LET THERE REMAIN’
• 48
• 49
• ‘MATAROA’
• 50TENTH IMAGE
• 51‘WITH THE HAND DEEPINTO THE WARM SEA’
• 52‘WHEN SILENCE WAS SPLIT’
• 53‘THE GODS OF THE POOR’
• 54‘WEATHER TOOK NO PITY ON US’
• 55ELEVENTH IMAGE
• 56‘LET ME SHOW YOU’
• 57‘THE DUTY’
• 58
• 59‘MOTHERS OF EUROPE’
• 60TWELFTH IMAGE
• 61‘ΤΗΕ QUEEN OF ALL VISION OF POETS’
• 62‘THE GODS ESCAPED’
• 63‘I CAN’T REMEMBERWHAT YOU BELIEVED IN’
• 64‘I STILL HAVEN’T FOUNDΤΗΕ FORUM’
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ENDNOTES