The loneliness…
doesn’t have the sorrowful colour
of the cloudy chick in the eyes.
She’s not wandering indolently and abstractly
shaking her hips inside concert halls
and icy museums.
She’s not yellow picture frames of ‘good’ old times
and naphthalene inside the chests of granny
violet ribbons and wicker straw hats.
She doesn’t open her legs with strangled giggles
steereye, curt sighs
and matching underpants.
The loneliness.
She has the colour of Pakistanis, the loneliness
and she’s measured dish to dish
along with their pieces
at the bottom of the skylight.
She stands upright patiently in queue
Bournazi – Aghia Barbara – Kokkinia
Toumpa –Stavroupolis – Kalamaria
Underneath all weathers
with a sweaty head.
She ejaculates screaming, brings downs the panes with chains
she occupies the means of production
she blows up proprietorship
she is prison’s visiting hours on Sundays
penalees and revolutionists same step in the forecourt
she’s sold and bought penny by penny breath by breath
in the slave markets of the Earth – Kotzia is just nearby –
wake up in the morning.
Wake up to look at her.
She’s a hooker in shacks
the German number on conscript soldiers
and the last
endless kilometers NATIONAL HIGHWAY–CENTRE
on the clinging meats from Bulgaria.
And when she clenches her blood and bears no longer
that they sell out her clan
she dances a zeibekiko barefoot on tables
holding in her bluish hands
a well sharpened axe.
The loneliness,
I say our loneliness. I speak of our own
she’s an axe in our hands
that spins spins spins spins over your heads
Katerina Gogou [1940-1993]
From the collection of poems IDIONIMO, 1980
Law No.410/1976 fortified the security forces against protesters and the regime itself against strikes, etc. It was dubbed ‘idionimo’ by anarchists and leftists, a word referring to the law passed in the late 1920s by the liberal prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos which ordered the expulsion of communists to barren island camps.
Pakistanis was the first immigrant worker population in Athens well before the first wave of immigration in the 1990s. Pakistani workers in the mid 1970s organized one of the fiercest wildcat strikes, at a time where the movement for proletarian autonomy was at its high noon.
Bournazi – Aghia Barbara – Kokkinia/ Toumpa –Stavroupolis – Kalamaria: proletarian neighbourhoods of Athens and Thessaloniki at the time.
Kotzia: the city hall square of Athens where day-workers (builders, etc.) gathered before dawn to be picked by construction bosses.
A short biography of K.Gogou
The original poem with K.Gogou’s voice (music by Kyriakos Sfetsas)