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    No is Yes (poetry)

    Contributor: Manash Bhattacharjee

    • July 10, 2015

    Creative · Featured · Magazine

    AP Photo AP Photo

    Let us treat Yes as a No…and No as a Yes
    ~ Nikos Karouzos, ‘Texts/Non-fiction/Prose’

    Greece,
    Your no is also a yes
    To other things,
    You spurned usurers
    For Athens’ pride

    Greece,
    You stood through war
    Resisted fascists,
    Your poets wrote poems
    On cigarette packs

    Greece,
    Your silences are oracles
    Of time’s future,
    With your aching hands
    You fisted tables

    You resisted the enemy
    Greece,
    You sabotaged
    The plans of annexation
    Burning bridges

    Greece,
    You let Marx sit on your
    Stoic shoulders,
    Your cynics defied kings
    Trusted workers

    Your history is a miracle
    Greece,
    You are a library
    Of words that escaped fire
    Survived Caesar

    The world is in your debt
    Greece,
    They can’t repay
    The wonders of your urns
    And your verses

    Today you brave penury
    Greece,
    With the grit
    Of a working class poet
    Who resisted

    He left behind omens
    On paper
    They remain inscribed
    In the eyes

    “But perhaps dawn will reveal a new face”[1]

    Manash Bhattacharjee
    July 10, 2015, Delhi

    Footnotes

    1. Yannis Ritsos

    About the Author

    IMGP8438--Do

    Photo credit: Rajarshi Dasgupta

    Manash Bhattacharjee is a poet, writer, translator and political science scholar from Jawaharlal Nehru University. His poems have appeared in The London Magazine, New Welsh Review, The Fortnightly Review, Elohi Gadugi Journal, George Szirtes’ Blog, Warscapes, First Proof: The Penguin Books of New Writing from India (Volume 5), The Missing Slate, The Little Magazine, etc. His first collection of poetry, Ghalib’s Tomb and Other Poems (2013), was published by U.K’s oldest literary journal, The London Magazine. He is currently Adjunct Professor in the School of Culture and Creative Expressions at Ambedkar University, New Delhi.

    Filed under: DebtGreecePoetry

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