Yánnina
For Stephen Yenser
“There lay the peninsula stretching far into the dark gray water, with its
mosque, its cypress tufts and fortress walls; there was the city stretching
far and wide along the water’s edge; there was the fatal island, the
closing scene of the history of the once all-powerful Ali.”
—Edward Lear
Somnambulists along the promenade
Have set up booths, their dreams:
Carpets, jewelry, kitchenware, halvah, shoes.
From a loudspeaker passionate lament
Mingles with the penny Jungle’s roars and screams.
Tonight in the magician’s tent
Next door a woman will be sawed in two,
But right now she’s asleep, as who is not, as who . . .
An old Turk at the water’s edge has laid
His weapons and himself down, sleeps
Undisturbed since, oh, 1913.
Nothing will surprise him should he wake,
Only how tall, how green the grass has grown
There by the dusty carpet of the lake
Sun beats, then sleepwalks down a vine-festooned arcade,
Giving himself away in golden heaps.
And in the dark gray water sleeps
One who said no to Ali. Kiosks all over town
Sell that postcard, “Kyra Frossíni’s Drown,”
Showing her, eyeballs white as mothballs, trussed
Beneath the bulging moon of Ali’s lust.
A devil (turban and moustache and sword)
Chucks the pious matron overboard—
Wait—Heaven help us—SPLASH!
The torch smokes on the prow. Too late.
(A picture deeply felt, if in technique slapdash.)
Wherefore the Lion of Epirus, feared
By Greek and Turk alike, tore his black beard
When to barred casements rose the song
Broken from bubbles rising all night long:
“A ton of sugar pour, oh pour into the lake
To sweeten it for poor, for poor Frossíni’s sake.” (*)
Awake? Her story’s aftertaste
Varies according to the listener.
Friend, it’s bitter coffee you prefer?
Brandy for me, and with a fine
White sandy bottom. Not among those braced
By action taken without comment, neat,
Here’s how! Grounds of our footnote infiltrate the treat,
Mud-vile to your lips, crystal-sweet to mine.
Twilight at last. Enter the populace.
One little public garden must retrace
Long after school its childish X,
Two paths that cross and cross. The hollyhock, the rose,
Zinnia and marigold hear themselves named
And blush for form’s sake, unashamed
Chorus out of Ignoramus Rex:
“What shall the heart learn, that already knows
Its place by water, and its time by sun?”
Mother wit fills the stately whispering sails
Of girls someone will board and marry. Who?
Look at those radiant young males.
Their morning-glory nature neon blue
Wilts here on the provincial vine. Where did it lead,
The race, the radiance? To oblivion
Dissembled by a sac of sparse black seed.
Now under trees men with rush baskets sell
Crayfish tiny and scarlet as the sins
In any fin-de-siècle villanelle.
Tables fill up. A shadow play begins.
Painted, translucent cut-outs fill the screen.
It glows. His children by a jumping bean
Karaghiózi clobbers, baits the Turk,
Then all of them sing, dance, tell stories, go berserk.
Tomorrow we shall cross the lake to see
The cottage tumbling down, where soldiers killed
Ali. Two rugless rooms. Cushions. Vitrines
In which, to this day, silks and bracelets swim.
Above, a painting hangs. It’s him,
Ali. The end is near, he’s sleeping between scenes
In a dark lady’s lap. Vassilikí.
The mood is calm, the brushwork skilled
By contrast with Frossíni’s mass-produced
Unsophisticated piece of goods.
The candle trembles in the watching god’s
Hand—almost a love-death, höchste Lust!
Her drained, compliant features haunt
The waters there was never cause to drown her in.
Your grimiest ragamuffin comes to want
Two loves, two versions of the Feminine:
One virginal and tense, brief as a bubble,
One flesh and bone—gone up no less in smoke
Where giant spits revolving try their rusty treble,
Sheep’s eyes pop, and death-wish ravens croak.
Remember, the Romantic’s in full feather.
Byron has visited. He likes
The luxe, and overlooks the heads on pikes;
Finds Ali “Very kind... indeed, a father... ” (*)
Funny, that is how I think of Ali.
On the one hand, the power and the gory
Details, pigeon—blood rages and retali—
ations, gouts of fate that crust his story;
And on the other, charm, the whimsically
Meek brow, its motives all ab ulteriori,
The flower-blue gaze twining to choke proportion,
Having made one more pretty face’s fortune.
A dove with Parkinson’s disease
Selects our fortunes: TRAVEL AND GROW WISE
And A LOYAL FRIEND IS MORE THAN GOLD.
But, at the island monastery, eyes
Gouged long since to the gesso sockets will outstare
This or that old-timer on his knees
Asking the candlelight for skill to hold
The figures flush against the screen’s mild glare.
Ali, my father—both are dead.
In so many words, so many rhymes,
The brave old world sleeps. Are we what it dreams
And is a rude awakening overdue?
Not in Yánnina. To bed, to bed.
The Lion sets. The lights wink out along the lake.
Weeks later, in this study gone opaque,
They are relit. See through me. See me through.
For partings hurt although we dip the pain
Into a glowing well—the pen I mean.
Living alone won’t make some inmost face to shine
Maned with light, ember and anodyne,
Deep in a desktop burnished to its grain.
That the last hour be learned again
By riper selves, couldn’t you doff this green
Incorruptible, the might-have-been,
And arm in arm with me dare the magician’s tent?
It’s hung with asterisks. A glittering death
Is hefted, swung. The victim smiles consent.
To a sharp intake of breath she comes apart
(Done by mirrors? Just one woman? Two?
A fight starts—in the provinces, one feels,
There’s never that much else to do)
Then to a general exhalation heals
Like anybody’s life, bubble and smoke
In afterthought, whose elements converge,
Glory of windless mornings that the barge
(Two barges, one reflected, a quicksilver joke)
Kept scissoring and mending as it steered
The old man outward and away,
Amber mouthpiece of a narghilé
Buried in his by then snow white beard.
Yánnina: Ioannina, or Jannina, a lake city, now the capital of Epirus in northwestern Greece, described in the epigraph by English painter and nonsense poet Edward Lear (1812-1888). Under Turkish control for centuries, its most famous period was when it was ruled by Ali Pasha (1741-1822), the "Lion of Epirus," whose flamboyant life, including his meeting with Byron, is vividly recounted in the biography Merrill quotes, The Diamond of Jannina (first published in 1936 under the title Ali the Lion) by the South African writer William Plomer (1903-1973).
Frossini: A wife of Ali Pasha.
Karaghiózi: The main Greek character in the eponymous Turkish shadow theater, a venerable genre with complex materials that is now almost extinct. The stage is separated from the audience by a fine white sheet of cotton or other material stretched taut and illuminated by oil lamps. The puppeteer holds the puppets, on horizontal rods, between the lights and the screen. The puppets (each about a foot high), silhouettes made of animal skin stained with translucent dyes, show up in brilliant color on the screen. Their operation is an intricate and delicate matter. The comic dramas, which mix slapstick with sophisticated literary devices, involve stock characters and formulaic structures, the details of which are improvised in presentation.
Vassilikí: A wife of Ali Pasha.
höchste Lust: "Highest bliss [desire]," from Isolde's last aria in the 1865 opera Tristan und Isolde by the German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883).
