My own father had no voice. I could hear his voice like a messy child's bed, only when he was playing cards. Only then would he resolutely slam his hand on the table, making it clear that this was what concerned him, the cards, the game, the gambling... Orphaned from a mother. And from games... Who knows what defenses were built around infant eyes, walls that remained in adulthood and spread their tentacles through space-time. Parasitic plants that started shyly from the soil and in a few months grew wild and became Jack's giant beanstalk.
Through their dense foliage, no sun can penetrate, nor can a voice be heard. The only hope is the axe. But what hands can lift the weight of the sharp blade? They are not the hands of a man, they are the weak little hands of a child. Of a boy who did not find, nor did he search, the path to adulthood, who now – in his old age – returns to the streets of the neighborhood and searches – for what exactly? – in recycling and garbage bins.
On the other hand, the mother's voice. Always shrill, absolute, curled as if she were being run through by electricity, repulsive, furious and defensive. Sharp as the dull kitchen knife that has been left in the drawer. But it's true, dull knives hurt more when you try to drive their blade deep into the flesh.
But here you are, as you head towards the exit from the marble forest, you open your mouth to speak and suddenly you don't recognize your own voice, there's a foreign voice again, that of big brother. It jumps in urgently, to impose and restore order, before the first note of your own melody has even emerged. You scold yourself once again, you've learned this well, of course, it's firmly molded in your body, mind and soul, now take out the steel bars one by one, where to find the appropriate tools, it's easier to leave them in their place and continue what you've been doing for so many years: ignoring you. This voice sounds strange and thunderous... It is not at all accidental that the role assigned to him by his parents-directors is: ruthless co-star, second father, second mother, "more royal than the king" in order to crush any chance of escape from the prison of the petty-bourgeois or bourgeois home. Big brother or Big sister, with caterpillars!
This voice comes to the surface, you pull it out of the depths where it had settled comfortably, but you recognize it as no longer yours, as a stranger, this voice no longer fits inside you. Your soul has grown, it doesn't fit in the narrow two-room apartment that squeezed it in, its dreams claim the penthouse, the sky with the stars, why not, hasn't it lived long enough in the damp and stinking basements? TIt's time you learned to speak your own language, let the other voices go to good, let them return wrinkled to their recipient, you have your own ship to navigate, the seas you've been waiting to sail for so long...
Now you understand why Kavvadias' poetry moves you. You find pieces of yourself in the verses, secretly and unacknowledged, hidden in forgotten corners, in trunks with rusty locks. But sooner or later the effortless breeze of poetry comes, to widen the cracks so that the smell of mold can go away, the wounds can be refreshed like white shirts and disinfected, the pus can be dried by the sea air, iodine and salt...
photo by jarmoluk, https://pixabay.com
