May 13, 2022January 14, 2024 edited by anders dahlgren

Efi Kalorkoti

Efi Kalorkoti is a Cypriot poet with a deep love for the Mediterranean world and her home. After 6 years in the UK and after gaining her BSc and MSc in Economics she has returned back to her home country. Now a certified Reiki healer, she uses vulnerability to address deeper psychological matters through poetry. You can explore her work further at: www.efikalorkoti.com

Heat Strokes

A heavy mist of slumber descents
13:00, 14:00, 15:00, 16:00
the day going by, then it’s gone.

The eyelids tied with invisible
robe, shutters pulled, signs
turn to closed. You only dream
of the sea, cooling
scorched bodies, soothing
red skins. Crushed ice in sweating
glasses, wasting in rose cordial,
turning paper straws into mush.

Slow life, slothful summers.
I wish for change, yet all
is still and immobile.

Poetry in this post: © Efi Kalorkoti
Published with the permission of Efi Kalorkoti

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THE ODYSSEY - HOMER - FROM BOOK XII

“Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water. As she vomited it up, it was like the water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire, and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their wits ends for fear. While we were taken up with this, and were expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down suddenly upon us and snatched up my six best men. I was looking at once after both ship and men, and in a moment I saw their hands and feet ever so high above me, struggling in the air as Scylla was carrying them off, and I heard them call out my name in one last despairing cry. As a fisherman, seated, spear in hand, upon some jutting rock throws bait into the water to deceive the poor little fishes, and spears them with the ox’s horn with which his spear is shod, throwing them gasping on to the land as he catches them one by one—even so did Scylla land these panting creatures on her rock and munch them up at the mouth of her den, while they screamed and stretched out their hands to me in their mortal agony. This was the most sickening sight that I saw throughout all my voyages.

Translator: Samuel Butler