Cyprus-Forum.com

[paliometoxo]

Toast you hardly ever post. how are you doing?

[denizaksulu]

Toast you hardly ever post. how are you doing?

I love my toast with Mosphilo jam. Yummy. I know, I know, I only eat it sparingly.

[Gabira]

Toast you hardly ever post. how are you doing?

How are you pali ?

I have been too busy in recent times to make ongoing valuable posts to the forum

I still visit and read every few days purely for the entertainment, but I refrain from participating in the usual perpetual useless debates with the same old bigots regurgitating their venom.

I've come to accept that there will never be a united Cyprus any time soon. This post by georgios is a fine example of the venom, malice and spirit of this forum

[georgios100]

I would like to apologize for the apparent inflammatory humor contained in the joke I posted. Never realized it would be taken as a racism remark, I am deeply sorry.

Admin, please delete the whole thread, thanks.

Georgios100

[Oracle]

Canadians ..

Still think it's acceptable to club baby seals over the head, in front of their mums?

[kurupetos]

Toast you hardly ever post. how are you doing?

I love my toast with Mosphilo jam. Yummy. I know, I know, I only eat it sparingly.

What is it?

[kurupetos]

I would like to apologize for the apparent inflammatory humor contained in the joke I posted. Never realized it would be taken as a racism remark, I am deeply sorry.

Admin, please delete the whole thread, thanks.

Georgios100

No, it's too late for that. This can be settled only with blood.

[denizaksulu]

Toast you hardly ever post. how are you doing?

I love my toast with Mosphilo jam. Yummy. I know, I know, I only eat it sparingly.

What is it?

Sorry but arent you Cypriot?

[kurupetos]

Toast you hardly ever post. how are you doing?

I love my toast with Mosphilo jam. Yummy. I know, I know, I only eat it sparingly.

What is it?

Sorry but arent you Cypriot?

Spare the insults, and tell me what it is...

[denizaksulu]

Toast you hardly ever post. how are you doing?

I love my toast with Mosphilo jam. Yummy. I know, I know, I only eat it sparingly.

What is it?

Sorry but arent you Cypriot?

Spare the insults, and tell me what it is...

You ignorant townie

Mosphilo Jam

The fringes of the mist are pulling back from the roofs with the
movements of a snake newly awoken from winter hibernation.


And while the dawn is unfolding its yellow-brown mantle from one
horizon to the other Varvarou, now deceased, sets off with her little
cinnamon-coloured goat to pick mosphila.


With a woven basket crooked on her arm she stoops down among the
bewitching iridescences of the last flames of autumn and brings alive
my memory, that same memory which is struggling not to blur your
crystalline mirrors, Deftera.


In the midst of the vegetation, within all this your scented image, I
see the honey-coloured eyes of Varvarou and their wistful shadow.


And as she takes the trail leading from the west, which is the level side
of the Pedias, to climb up towards the naked precipice, she appears to
me to be gathering all the gifts which that time of the year encloses.


Now that a melancholic tenderness threatens to crush my life I
can hear once more the dry rustle from the trodden stalks that her
footsteps awaken.


And that sweet, sharp-flavoured taste of mosphilo jam brings to
mind the same mellowness of the autumn dawn when, from time to
time, the sun was hiding behind the clouds like a lost smile.


Fields are still plunged in shadow. The October morning, like an angel
wounded from struggling with demons all night long, surrenders to
the chilly breath of the south-west wind.


And Varvarou of the honey-coloured eyes, black woollen shawl and
small cinnamon-coloured goat saw me all quite alone on the river-
bank and she waved her hand.

It was a tender but at the same time airy gesture which contained in
its fondness both a farewell and a gentle abandonment to fate.


The very next morning Varvarou journeyed to heaven, carrying along
with her a little bottle of mosphilo jam in her woven basket.


In the midst of the velvet that the summer’s dust left in my heart,
another woman started taking shape very gradually, a woman with
hair like ripe ears of corn; and she took from my hands the flower of
my childhood years.


From that time on a novel and mysterious feeling has been born in
my heart; it was going to guide me far, very far, much further than
logic should normally dictate.

Translated from Greek by: Nora Lassis

Nora Liassis teaches English Literature and is Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the European University Cyprus. Her areas of research and publication include Romanticism, Byron and the Near East, English/French symbolist poets, the language and literature of topos, Eastern travel writing (16th-19th century), and language networking.

Both poems and their English translations have previously appeared in Theoklis Kouyialis, My Own Deftera (Nicosia: Moufflon Publications 2007 http://www.moufflonpublications.com/), and are here published with the gracious permission of the Press.