Blue Moon in Rajasthan and other poems

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SACRIFICE

thirsty for new hope
I stir through time spent ashes
and I see you Sister
appearing in a vision
bare arms anointed with turmeric
hands bloody skinning dead goat
stretching the heart’s skin
ancient drum forever beating new life
trophy of a new day
and I
I write my rhetoric
both executioner cutlass aloft and weeping goat
sometime flesh seeking spirit
now spirit seeking flesh
peep at you in the land of the living
as you extend the skin of my heart

Stephanos Stephanides was born in Trikomo in northeast Cyprus in October 1949. He went to the UK as a child, where he lived until finishing his education at Cardiff University. He has traveled widely and has lived in several countries. For many years his life and work were in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and as such his native language ceased to be his dominant tongue. He writes in English but other languages reverberate in his writing. As well as poet, he is a literary and cultural critic, ethnographer, translator, all with a commitment to and interest in cultural translatability and memory. Years in Guyana (South America) in the 1980s had a profound impact on his close friendship with communities of descendants of Indian indentured labourers in villages and sugar plantations. Their cultural expression and grassroots spiritualism inspired work including poetry for which he was awarded first prize in the 1988 poetry competition of the Society of Anthropology and Humanism (USA), a book “Translating Kali’s Feast: the Goddess in Indo-Caribbean Ritual and Fiction” (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), and two documentary films, “Hail Mother Kali” (1988) and “Kali in the Americas” (2003). “Hail Mother Kali” was nominated for an award for excellence by the Society for Anthro-Journalism (USA) and the footage is in the Smithsonian Institute’s film archives. In 200, he served as judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. In 1991, he returned to his native island as a member of the founding faculty of the University of Cyprus where he is Professor of Comparative Literature and  currently Dean of Humanities. He lives in Nicosia with his wife Kathy and daughter Katerina.

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