Mythistorema- Part 3

  BY GEORGE SEFERIS
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

 Λουκάς Γεραλής

 8

What are they after, our souls, travelling

on the decks of decayed ships

crowded in with sallow women and crying babies

unable to forget themselves either with the flying fish

or with the stars that the masts point our at their tips;

grated by gramophone records

committed to non-existent pilgrimages unwillingly

murmuring broken thoughts from foreign languages.

What are they after, our souls, travelling

on rotten brine-soaked timbers

from harbour to harbour?

Shifting broken stones, breathing in

the pine’s coolness with greater difficulty each day,

swimming in the waters of this sea

and of that sea,

without the sense of touch

without men

in a country that is no longer ours

nor yours.

We knew that the islands were beautiful

somewhere round about here where we grope,

slightly lower down or slightly higher up,

a tiny space.

             9

The harbour is old, I can’t wait any longer

for the friend who left the island with the pine trees

for the friend who left the island with the plane trees

for the friend who left for the open sea.

I stroke the rusted cannons, I stroke the oars

so that my body may revive and decide.

The sails give off only the smell

of salt from the other storm.

If I chose to remain alone, what I longed for

was solitude, not this kind of waiting,

my soul shattered on the horizon,

these lines, these colours, this silence.

The night’s stars take me back to Odysseus,

to his anticipation of the dead among the asphodels.

When we moored here we hoped to find among the asphodels

the gorge that knew the wounded Adonis.

             10

Our country is closed in, all mountains

that day and night have the low sky as their roof.

We have no rivers, we have no wells, we have no springs,

only a few cisterns — and these empty — that echo, and that we worship.

A stagnant hollow sound, the same as our loneliness

the same as our love, the same as our bodies.

We find it strange that once we were able to build

our houses, huts and sheep-folds.

And our marriages, the cool coronals and the fingers,

become enigmas inexplicable to our soul.

How were our children born, how did they grow strong?

Our country is closed in. The two black Symplegades

close it in. When we go down

to the harbours on Sunday to breathe freely

we see, lit in the sunset,

the broken planks from voyages that never ended,

bodies that no longer know how to love.

             11

Sometimes your blood froze like the moon

in the limitless night your blood

spread its white wings over

the black rocks, the shapes of trees and houses,

with a little light from our childhood years.

             12

                                                                         Bottle in the sea

Three rocks, a few burnt pines, a lone chapel

and farther above

the same landscape repeated starts again:

three rocks in the shape of a gateway, rusted,

a few burnt pines, black and yellow,

and a square hut buried in whitewash;

and still farther above, many times over,

the same landscape recurs level after level

to the horizon, to the twilit sky.

Here we moored the ship to splice the broken oars,

to drink water and to sleep.

The sea that embittered us is deep and unexplored

and unfolds a boundless calm.

Here among the pebbles we found a coin

and threw dice for it.

The youngest won it and disappeared.

We put to sea again with our broken oars.

             13

                                                                         Hydra

Dolphins banners and the sound of cannons.

The sea once so bitter to your soul

bore the many-coloured and glittering ships

it swayed, rolled and tossed them, all blue with white wings,

once so bitter to your soul

now full of colours in the sun.

White sails and sunlight and wet oars

struck with a rhythm of drums on stilled waves.

Your eyes, watching, would be beautiful,

your arms, reaching out, would glow,

your lips would come alive, as they used to,

at such a miracle:

that’s what you were looking for

                                           what were you looking for in front of ashes

or in the rain in the fog in the wind

even when the lights were growing dim

and the city was sinking and on the stone pavement

the Nazarene showed you his heart,

what were you looking for? why don’t you come? what were you looking for?

             14

Three red pigeons in the light

inscribing our fate in the light

with colours and gestures of people

we once loved.

             15

                                                             Quid πλατανων opacissimus

Sleep wrapped you in green leaves like a tree

you breathed like a tree in the quiet light

in the limpid spring I looked at your face:

eyelids closed, eyelashes brushing the water.

In the soft grass my fingers found your fingers

I held your pulse a moment

and felt elsewhere your heart’s pain.

Under the plane tree, near the water, among laurel

sleep moved you and scattered you

around me, near me, without my being able to touch the whole of you —

one as you were with your silence;

seeing your shadow grow and diminish,

lose itself in the other shadows, in the other

world that let you go yet held you back.

The life that they gave us to live, we lived.

Pity those who wait with such patience

lost in the black laurel under the heavy plane trees

and those, alone, who speak to cisterns and wells

and drown in the voice’s circles.

Pity the companion who shared our privation and our sweat

and plunged into the sun like a crow beyond the ruins,

without hope of enjoying our reward.

Give us, outside sleep, serenity.

             16

                                                                         The name is Orestes

On the track, once more on the track, on the track,

how many times around, how many blood-stained laps, how many black

rows; the people who watch me,

who watched me when, in the chariot,

I raised my hand glorious, and they roared triumphantly.

The froth of the horses strikes me, when will the horses tire?

The axle creaks, the axle burns, when will the axle burst into flame?

When will the reins break, when will the hooves

tread flush on the ground

on the soft grass, among the poppies

where, in the spring, you picked a daisy.

They were lovely, your eyes, but you didn’t know where to look

nor did I know where to look, I, without a country,

I who go on struggling here, how many times around?

and I feel my knees give way over the axle

over the wheels, over the wild track

knees buckle easily when the gods so will it,

no one can escape, what use is strength, you can’t

escape the sea that cradled you and that you search for

at this time of trial, with the horses panting,

with the reeds that used to sing in autumn to the Lydian mode

the sea you cannot find no matter how you run

no matter how you circle past the black, bored Eumenides,   

unforgiven.