On my final day on Nisyros island, I went swimming at Hohlakia. With its enormous black pebbles resembling miniature boulders, Hohlakia challenges the very act of walking or balancing. Entering its waters is a struggle, even when the sea is "smooth like oil." And the clarity of the water remains elusive unless one surrenders to the buoyancy. This extraordinary place is a volcano. On that final day in Nisyros, two words, "volcanoed" and "ηφαιστειωθής", lingered in my brain. On the boat to Kos and the plane to Athens, and from there to Cape Town, I kept on ruminating, "I was volcanoed." "Ηφαιστειώθηκα." My body was certain that I had survived a cataclysmic volcanic eruption that tore me apart and reconstructed me in a mix of languages that melted into each other like lava. Three months before, my father had died after six agonising months of illness and horror. I had promised myself that this time I would not be the doctor of the family. I would just be a son. I failed. And I didn't even have space or time to grieve; my mother had sucked out all the family's sorrow and returned only wrath. Volcanoed and ηφαιστειωθής came together, and some more words were melted in, until I wrote a poem in two parts. This was the first entirely bilingual poem I have written. Ever since that day, I've found it difficult to write a poem using only one of my two primary languages. People ask me if I translate the poems from Greek into English or vice versa. I grapple with the concept of translation, for my process transcends mere translation. I write some lines and stanzas in one language and some in the other, and I do ‘counter translate' until I feel each version is complete. The two versions, like twins, are growing together, swimming in the same amniotic fluid, but they are dizygotic twins, not identical. The linguistic duality I navigate is a constant negotiation, a dialogue between two identities that feels both enriching and disorienting. At times, I feel I have to choose between languages. But how does one choose between their mother tongue and their new language to express joy, pain, awe, or grief? As all of us who have left behind a country, a home, and a language know, once you've left, you're gone forever. My Greek feels somewhat impoverished after nearly two decades away. I find myself grappling for the right words upon my return to my homeland. I had stopped reading poems and prose in Greek since I left. Only Cavafy has been accompanying me in my years of self-exile. I now think that my Greek may never fully recover, that my English may forever remain an imperfect reflection. But isn't it such an incredible gift that I can swim in the depth, the richness, the precariousness of not just one but two wonderful languages? I hope that these twin poems find a sense of completeness in their shared existence.
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