Mythistorema- Part 4 (Final)

BY GEORGE SEFERIS

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

            17

                                                                                                            

                                                                               Astyanax

Now that you are leaving, take the boy with you as well,

the boy who saw the light under the plane tree,

one day when trumpets resounded and weapons shone

and the sweating horses

bent to the trough to touch with wet nostrils

the green surface of the water.

The olive trees with the wrinkles of our fathers

the rocks with the wisdom of our fathers

and our brother’s blood alive on the earth

were a vital joy, a rich pattern

for the souls who knew their prayer.

Now that you are leaving, now that the day of payment

dawns, now that no one knows

whom he will kill and how he will die,

take with you the boy who saw the light

under the leaves of that plane tree

and teach him to study the trees.

             18

I regret having let a broad river slip through my fingers

without drinking a single drop.

Now I’m sinking into the stone.

A small pine tree in the red soil

is all the company I have.

Whatever I loved vanished with the houses

that were new last summer

and crumbled in the winds of autumn.

             19

Even if the wind blows it doesn’t cool us

and the shade is meagre under the cypress trees

and all around slopes ascending to the mountains;

they’re a burden for us

the friends who no longer know how to die.

             20

In my breast the wound opens again

when the stars descend and become kin to my body

when silence falls under the footsteps of men.

These stones sinking into time, how far will they drag me with them?

The sea, the sea, who will be able to drain it dry?

I see the hands beckon each drawn to the vulture and the hawk

bound as I am to the rock that suffering has made mine,

I see the trees breathing the black serenity of the dead

and then the smiles, so static, of the statues.

             21

We who set out on this pilgrimage

looked at the broken statues

became distracted and said that life is not so easily lost

that death has unexplored paths

and its own particular justice;

that while we, still upright on our feet, are dying,

affiliated in stone

united in hardness and weakness,

the ancient dead have escaped the circle and risen again

and smile in a strange silence.

             22

So very much having passed before our eyes

that even our eyes saw nothing, but beyond

and behind was memory like the white sheet one night in an enclosure

where we saw strange visions, even stranger than you,

pass by and vanish into the motionless foliage of a pepper tree;

having known this fate of ours so well

wandering among broken stones, three or six thousand years

searching in collapsed buildings that might have been our homes

trying to remember dates and heroic deeds:

will we be able?

having been bound and scattered,

having struggled, as they said, with non-existent difficulties

lost, then finding again a road full of blind regiments

sinking in marshes and in the lake of Marathon,

will we be able to die as we should?

             23

A little farther

we will see the almond trees blossoming

the marble gleaming in the sun

the sea breaking into waves

a little farther,

let us rise a little higher.

             24

Here end the works of the sea, the works of love.

Those who will some day live here where we end —

should the blood happen to darken in their memory and overflow —

let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels,

let them turn the heads of the victims towards Erebus:

We who had nothing will school them in serenity.

George Seferis, "Mythistorema" from Collected Poems (George Seferis). Translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Copyright © 1995 by George Seferis.