Poros Minor
Maria Laina
Translated from the Greek by Sarah McCann
At night in the middle of the island
my skeleton eroded by her hand
while the bees and the ants are led
by the sun.

She should be returning home any minute now
she carries wild strawberries in her left hand
she bends lightly toward his voice, quietly she gazes at him
her red eyes glow.

The most shameless, the most beautiful
under the black dome and the sharpness of the stars
she will mimic again the grace and the strength of a sword.



Μικρὸς Πόρος

Νύχτα στὴ μέση τοῦ νησιοῦ
ὁ σκελετός μου φαγωμένος ἀπ’ τὸ χέρι της
ἐνῶ οἱ μέλισσες καὶ τὰ μερμήγκια ὁδηγοῦνται
ἀπ’ τὸν ἥλιο.

Ἐκείνη ὅπου νά ’ναι θὰ γυρίζει σπίτι
περνάει στὸ ἀριστερό της χέρι τὶς ἀγριοφράουλες
σκύβει ἐλαφρὰ πρὸς τὴ φωνή του, ἥσυχα τὸν βλέπει
τὰ κόκκινα μάτια της φέγγουν.

Η πιὸ ἀδιάντροπη ἡ ὀμορφότερη
κάτω ἀπὸ τὸν μαῦρο θόλο καὶ τὴν οξυδέρκεια τῶν ἄστρων
θὰ μιμηθεῖ ξανὰ τὴ χάρη καὶ τὴ δύναμη ἑνὸς σπαθιοῦ.
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Maria Laina writes with relentless attention to emotion. In this poem and others, she evokes a mood in a mist, offering grounding in her vivid details. There is immediacy coupled with the feeling of drifting through a magical realm. With Laina’s poetry, one can live on the surface or search the depths below. She is an enchanter.

Laina was awarded the Greek National Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection "Rose Fear" 
(Rodinos Fovos), which contains “Poros Minor.”

Sarah McCann on "Poros Minor"
Black-and-white image of three Grecian urns
Lory Bedikian on How the Ode Helped Her Grieve and Grow

"I’m grateful that I was drawn to the form of the ode years ago and that the reading, studying, teaching and writing created something in me that felt confident enough to write my own versions and send them out for publication. Bishop was right about losing. It’s easy. What’s hard is doing something with the loss to create something that remains for ourselves and for others."

via LIT HUB
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
What Sparks Poetry: Karen An-hwei Lee on "Dear Millennium, a Jade Rabbit on the Far Side of the Moon”

"About a year or so before the global pandemic of 2020, China landed a rover on the far side of the moon. The rover’s name was 'Jade Rabbit,' a robot that was part of the series of Chang’E missions. This mixture of facts and metaphors inspired me to reflect on our relationships to dead metaphors and their intricate web of mythologies and cultural stories leading to these metaphors—for instance, the moon as green cheese, the man in the moon, the rabbit under a cassia tree in the moon, and the lady who drank the elixir of immortality and floated there."
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