Helen Koukoutsis reading ‘Mother's Sonnet’

Dust and dirt settle on his coffin.
I find you beneath a bottle brush shade
cross-stitching blood to muslin—crying—
μητέρα, γιατί με γέννησες?

Crickets throng his marble doorstep.
I find you there by his ‘welcome mat’
topping the charcoal tablet with incense—chanting—
έχασα τον σύζυγό μου, τον σύντροφό, τον λατρευτό μου. 

On trading your brick house for a ghost ship
home to him—remember me, μανούλα μου
as I part fossil skirts from lace-drawn pants
tapestries from wedding rings and figurines— 

in the bedroom where your history book
of love lays embroidered in rainbow threads.

Transliteration and translation

μητέρα, γιατί με γέννησες?
mitéra, giatí me génnises
mother, why did you give birth to me?

έχασα τον σύζυγό μου, τον σύντροφό, τον λατρευτό μου.
échasa ton sýzygó mou, ton sýntrofó, ton latreftó mou
I lost my husband, my partner, my beloved. 

μανούλα μου
manoúla mou
my dearest mother

Helen Koukoutsis teaches Literary Studies at Western Sydney University. She balances her time between teaching, research, and writing poetry. Her poems have appeared in various online and in-print spaces, including Eureka Street, Nebu[lab], Buddhist Poetry Review, and more recently as part of a poetry exhibition for WSU. Her first collection of poems, Cicada Chimes, was published in 2017 by Ginninderra Press. She is currently working on her second collection of poems with a distinctly multilingual (Greek-Slavic-English) voice that expresses and amplifies the pleasures and fears of Greek-Australian women's migratory experiences.