The Islands I, Rhapsodies of Climate Change

Presenting Vasilis N. Pis' latest poetry collection, The Islands I, Rhapsodies of Climate Change, published in 2023. Available is the whole collection in Greek and an English translation of three poems from the collection. You can find the whole collection by clicking here.

FOREST

What are you looking? Truth;
I wanted to know what you think
As you see the burnt forest
Without looking at us, not even listening

You're just looking at the loss
The blue spot in the sky
You look like you're stepping on a cliff
And your sorrow is like the
Dull stars of winter

When you stare inside
From tree trunks
I know – you loathe fire
Beautiful deer forest

I know, you dream of the green pasture
Run, enjoy your youth
Feel the change in your teenage years
You have every right to stand
Among the trees when the wind
It brings you the wet, pine smell

Before oblivion stores everything, it flattens it
Like the water lost in the kitchen sink
As it swirls in the siphon for, the underworld.

FIELDS WITH GRAPES

Speak with all the weight of the brokenness you feel
May your soul and the gardeners weed
It is a rare species today

I hear your voice my dear friend
Like the rosy hands of the workers
That thaw in the cold

You know, the thundering sorrows
They come like hungry vultures
They don't leave without grabbing their prey

The strong Sun, we learned in the summers
How can we not prevent him?
But you can have the beneficial rain
Sow it to go to other places
To raise the sheaves as they tear the Earth

To become men and women, tough
When they put their hands in the dirt
They put their hands in the rain, the wind
And in the heart of the cornfields

Which flare up wildly every June onwards
At nine in the evening the moon is still shining
From the long, thick teeth of the evening sun.

SEA

Midsummer on the island
The fire of the Sun immobilized
Like a boat on my back
Surrounded by the burning
Broken bottles floating
On the small ridges of the waves
Like bright aquariums

I am the sea and I want
To remain as I am
To join the heart of summer
Not to succumb to any weakness
To move forward, wherever my currents take me

Until dusk, when the across the street
Mountain ridge
Surrounded by a complex
Neighboring islands wonders why the
Deep red, getting ready
To defeat, the dull blue.

The project is part of the subtheme Climate Crisis and Poetry.