When you are driving on ehte roads of our occupied villages and towns
Bogazi, Koma Tou Yialou, Trikomo, the pain is profound
Last night I took a picture of my mother
Standing next to the statue of Grigoris Afxentiou.
‘Stand there so I can take a picture of you, too’, she whispered
I never stand next to statues to be photographed
Yet for some reason, I obeyed without refusing,
Intuitively I leaned my head tenderly on the statue; hugged it.
Virgin to life, whore of the underworld.
Donned once with beauty,
Consumed now by carnality;
Deplete me of that which me makes human.
May your hand reach to my soul;
Poise it and torment it,
Lash it with the whip of your antipathy.
May the tendrils of anger reach deep to my mind,
Suffocate it with taint.
May it feel your wrath,
And your corruption;
So it may never forget the voice of beauty’s sorrow.
The harrowing screams of death, a procreation of hell.
Our minds act as a cauldron for blood to boil,
Our tainted morals flow through our decrepit veins.
Dying is not nearly as painful as when you see it
before you.
The Man of God is drunken without wine
The Man of God is sated without meat
The Man of God is rapturous, amazed
The Man of God has neither food nor sleep
The Man of God is a king beneath a humble cloak
The Man of God is a treasure in a ruin
The Man of God in not of wind and earth
The Man of God is not of fire and water
We adored this Earth so, my Lord
with a love that I am afraid what is waiting us as we depart
is to find our minds thinking only of her
always running back to our own village
I, the most perfect syllable in the world.
It encapsulates me and all that is mine
And all that I perceive or have perceived,
All that I encountered or experienced, the
Totality of my existence and its meaning
To me and the ripples of its influence, little
Or large, on the world around it, completely
Ensconced within this one tiny utterance
That takes a fragment of a moment to
Attain its meaning in its full complexity
That mocks at any naive attempt on the
Part of the “Categorizers” to encumber it
With a fixed definition or to decipher its
Ever variable, ever evolving, ever fluid
Semantics. Definition may bring solace
To the rationalists, but it brings not Truth.
Is this the red that should have been
dispersing art on a painter’s canvas?
Is it the red that matadors withhold from charging bulls,
perhaps to spur the fire on a fare lady’s smile?
Research sheds light on the missing persons of Cyprus who disappeared without a trace during the Turkish invasion of 1974. Andrea Stylianou talks to “Neos Kosmos” about her academic achievements and being a human rights advocate.