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Two Poems

by Karen Van Dyck

Karaghiozis

How heavy is my tiredness?
How much does it weigh?
Can the umbrella of my shadow puppet 
keep me up tonight, hold me halfway 
between the water and the Brooklyn bridge,
unfurl my manly skirts flapping in the wind – 
foustanella, foustanella, can you keep me safe tonight?

E.L.I.A Collection

Compensation

                 for Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke    

The rhyme of an uneven gait 
is the measure of her poetry,
words that come from here and there 
whose balance and proportion 
owe everything to chance,
a wobbly joyousness that gasps for air
and comes up empty-handed,
only to dive down again for more.

If certain streets have traffic 
and others less
this is not a condemnation of the whole.

The wildly loping hobble of the poet 
does not mean she won’t arrive 
in time for dinner.

Karen Van Dyck recently published an anthology of translations Austerity Measures: New Greek Poetry which won the London Hellenic Prize (2016). Her poetry has appeared in Tender, Locomotive and Poiitiki.