Live Encounters Greek Poets & Writers September 2026
Passage into the Ineffable, poems by Pavlina Pampoudi.
Translated from Greek by Aristi Trendel.
Passage into the Ineffable
It exists, it does not exist, yet all of us
In the depths of sleep encounter it–
This dark tunnel with its fluorescent graffiti
Advertisements for exotic destinations
Indecipherable scenes from pasts and from the coming soon
In a single unified time–
I mean this submarine, this black passage
Where, there, all of us, whether we want it or not, slide through–
(We fit only naked
Stripped of the disguises of discourse
Of the tentacles of sibilants
Of the cutters of dentals
Of alveolars, of the hooks of diphthongs,
Loosened in their Erasmian enunciation–
Of vowels, of alpha, of omega, of high sounds–
Stripped even of the still inarticulate
Squeal, bleat, or bellow
And of every sonic effect of existence–)
It exists, it does not exist, yet all of us
Thus in sleep discover the passage
That slowly initiates us into the ineffable–
Slowly, because
Each of us has several thousand rehearsals before
The final curtain of silence rises.
(Unpublished)
Mathematics
You wake
They sink as you surface
Lessons learned, memories, ideas, people
Dream books, poems, inspirations, everything
nothing–
(And yet bubbles slip free, the zeros
Invisible stems of water, countless, rise
Something like imaginary numbers stays afloat
Into chords they curve, differentiate and equalize,
Interweaving, coiling–
From its nonexistent foundations
The half-wrought human work that lies beyond reason
Mathematics
Branches without end into chaos
Mapping, marking out
The divine territories of the irrational–)
(Unpublished)
© Pavlina Pampoudi
Pavlina Pampoudi is a poet, fiction writer, translator, painter, and founding member of both the Hellenic Authors’ Society, where she served for five years as Secretary General, and the Circle of Poets. She studied History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and also attended courses in Mathematics and Fine Arts in Athens and London. She has published eighteen poetry collections, six books of fiction, and more than forty books for children, translated twenty-two literary works—including T. S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Lewis Carroll—and written song lyrics, as well as radio and television scripts. She is currently editor-in-chief of the online literary magazine Peri Hou.