Mythistorema- Part 2

 BY GEORGE SEFERIS

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

         

         5

We didn’t know them

                                                 deep down it was hope that said

we’d known them since early childhood.

We saw them perhaps twice and then they took to the ships:

cargoes of coal, cargoes of grain, and our friends

lost beyond the ocean forever.

Dawn finds us beside the tired lamp

drawing on paper, awkwardly, painfully,

ships mermaids or sea shells;

at dusk we go down to the river

because it shows us the way to the sea;

and we spend the nights in cellars that smell of tar.

Our friends have left us

                                                      perhaps we never saw them, perhaps

we met them when sleep

still brought us close to the breathing wave

perhaps we search for them because we search for the other life,

beyond the statues.

            6

                                                                           M.R.

The garden with its fountains in the rain

you will see only from behind the clouded glass

of the low window. Your room

will be lit only by the flames from the fireplace

and sometimes the distant lightning will reveal

the wrinkles on your forehead, my old Friend.

The garden with the fountains that in your hands

was a rhythm of the other life, beyond the broken

statues and the tragic columns

and a dance among the oleanders

near the new quarries —

misty glass will have cut it off from your life.

You won’t breathe; earth and the sap of the trees

will spring from your memory to strike

this window struck by rain

from the outside world.

             7

                                                             South wind

Westward the sea merges with a mountain range.

From our left the south wind blows and drives us mad,

the kind of wind that strips bones of their flesh.

Our house among pines and carobs.

Large windows. Large tables

for writing you the letters we’ve been writing

so many months now, dropping them

into the space between us in order to fill it up.

Star of dawn, when you lowered your eyes

our hours were sweeter than oil

on a wound, more joyful than cold water

to the palate, more peaceful than a swan’s wings.

You held our life in the palm of your hand.

After the bitter bread of exile,

at night if we remain in front of the white wall

your voice approaches us like the hope of fire;

and again this wind hones

a razor against our nerves.

Each of us writes you the same thing

and each falls silent in the other’s presence,

watching, each of us, the same world separately

the light and darkness on the mountain range

and you.

Who will lift this sorrow from our hearts?

Yesterday evening a heavy rain and again today

the covered sky burdens us. Our thoughts –

like the pine needles of yesterday’s downpour

bunched up and useless in front of our doorway —

would build a collapsing tower.

Among these decimated villages

on this promontory, open to the south wind

with the mountain range in front of us hiding you,

who will appraise for us the sentence to oblivion?

Who will accept our offering, at this close of autumn?