The Living Dead

Honouring our poetic ancestors 

The Comforter
By Dimitris Tsaloumas (1921-2016)

So that's how the land lies?

You've no idea how I hurried in this heat

with not a leaf stirring in the poplars

and my throat as dry as a bone.

It's closed; I shut it.

Yes, the window too. Don't worry.

I've a good mind to put you out in the yard

so that he'll find you there, next to the tin-can

with the jonquil, where you can see the shore

crowded with sponge-boats back from Barbary.

All hell's let loose at Rebelos's place

with sponge-divers

chucking their money around by the fistful.

I can hear you. Your voice is a bit hoarse

but I can hear you. And don't turn to the wall

and curl yourself up that way.

You've never been scared of war or woman

in your life. What's got into you now?

It's nothing — you'll see.

He never comes with a taxman's satchel in his hand

or in a gendarme's uniform.

In fact, they say he's rather gently-spoken

so perhaps he'll just sigh a bit and say

come on, Nicolas old chap,

come on, we're running late and ought

to cross the border before nightfall.

No matter how often you take this road

you never get used to it.

You know, he's got his problems too.

I can see you, I can see you —

don't imagine I'd take my eyes off you now

you poor bugger!

And where's that no-good son of yours?

You can bet he'll be coming home now,

as soon as he gets the message,

to rip open the mattress.

Look, I’ll get the woman next door

to light the icon-lamp. I’ll be back,

never fear. I’ll go for a stroll on the beach

and I’ll be back.

From The Observatory. Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1985

Today we're revisiting Australian-Greek poet Dimitris Tsaloumas, who was featured in 'I Wish I'd Written This' in October 2012. The poem I chose that time was full of his undoubted love for his adopted country. He also continued to have great love for his native land, despite having to flee it in 1951 due to persecution for his political ideas.

In later life, with the political climate much changed, he spent part of every year back in Greece. He died recently aged 94, having spent his last three years on the island of Leros, his birthplace.

After migrating, he didn't start writing poetry again until 1974, but then went on to have a distinguished career, writing in both Greek and English. Wikipedia tells us that:

Among the many prizes he has received for his writing are the National Book Council Award (1983), Patrick White Award (1994) and an Emeritus Award from Literature Board of the Australia Council for outstanding and lifelong contribution to Australian literature (2002).

My previous column refers you to the article about him at Australian Poetry Library, where you can also read many of his poems. Today I'm linking you to an obituary by Jason Steger, Literary Editor of the Melbourne Age.

Poems and photos posted to 'The Living Dead' for purposes of study and review remain the property of the copyright holders.

I Wish I'd Written This

Driving North

by Dimitris Tsaloumas (1921 - )

Against the level sun and the screech of brakes
through porous sheets of blindness I gripped
the wheel and stopped above the great plain
till I saw him kindle the reefs of cloud
over the western ridge. Then, wire-strung,
set in the rim of the embankment down
the tumbling hill, I saw the dragon's teeth
flash past against the fired sky.
Fence-posts, I thought: in dreamy lands
the reading of signs is unprofitable.
Yet in the nursery the monster sleeps.
He sighs and heaves oozing a greenness past
this green, where magic sword and holy spear
glint still unread in the flight of birds,
in the prophetic guts of oxen.

                                              Children,
please don't retreat behind this sunset
yet. I carry the pterodactyl in the van,
the flying spider, bats big as babies.
Tyrannosaurus himself wanders about
bigger than old whales grazing across
the frozen seas, than tanks on the doorstep
of Nicaragua. Saw him through misty glass
this morning stalking the towns in the hills
when shivering just out of frosty night
I prayed until the sun who flickered in the woods
crept up the flanking conifers and hit the top
with a crash of cymbals.

                                         Night is falling
forever now over the roads in the North
of New South Wales. The blue-bright waters
of an undying day are seeping through
into perplexing memory. Scouting beams
sculpt shapes ahead from shifting shadows,
furbish up idols out of secret time
that rush surprised along the edge of light
back into populous darkness. This trip
is endless, the compass irrelevant. My riches
are now fetched by maps beyond the truth
of geography and the attraction of the poles.

(from the book Falcon Drinking)

Multi-award winning Greek-Australian poet Dimitris Tsaloumas has lived in Melbourne for 70 years. He received a BA from the University of Melbourne and then worked as a teacher of English and modern languages. He retired from teaching in 1982. 

As a very young man he took part in the Resistance during the German and Italian occupation of Greece.

 Although he left Greece in 1951 for political reasons, he has been able to spend much time there in later life.

 The author of numerous poetry collections, he writes in Greek and English and is highly regarded in both countries. When I knew him he was something of a mentor, in an informal capacity, to younger poets including me.

The Australian Poetry Library says of his work:

While Tsaloumas’s poetry is formally highly structured rather than experimental, his themes range from the classical to the contemporary.

In Tsaloumas' work Hellenic traditions are reflected in highly structured and formal poetry ranging from the elegiac to the sardonic. While regarded as the paradigmatic voice of the poet in exile, more precisely of the Greek diaspora, Tsaloumas perceives himself rather as an Australian-Greek writer. He reflects a classical poetic tradition, presenting a medley of voices, a cast of commentators on modern society. His work transcends the personal and the political and is quite distinct from accounts of migrant experiences which catalogue the minutiae of the struggle for survival.

His books are available on Amazon and you can read a large number of his poems here.

The poem I've chosen for you is from one of his earlier books. I like it because I'm well acquainted with the landscape described. In fact I live in the north of New South Wales. In Australia, travelling north implies Queensland (which involves travelling through NSW). When I still lived in Melbourne, I made that long car trip several times. This ancient country, especially at night, does feel both vast and primitive, as the poem suggests — thrilling and somewhat scary.  Perhaps it is natural that it took the fresh perspective of a migrant to see this so clearly and express it so well.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).