Mythistorema

 BY GEORGE SEFERIS

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY AND PHILIP SHERRARD

1

The angel —

three years we waited for him, attention riveted,

closely scanning

the pines the shore the stars.

One with the blade of the plough or the ship’s keel

we were searching to find once more the first seed

so that the age-old drama could begin again.

We returned to our homes broken,

limbs incapable, mouths cracked

by the tastes of rust and brine.

when we woke we traveled towards the north, strangers

plunged into mist by the immaculate wings of swans that wounded us.

On winter nights the strong wind from the east maddened us,

in the summers we were lost in the agony of days that couldn’t die.

We brought back

these carved reliefs of a humble art.

             2

Still one more well inside a cave.

It used to be easy for us to draw up idols and ornaments

to please those friends who still remained loyal to us.

The ropes have broken; only the grooves on the well’s lip

remind us of our past happiness:

the fingers on the rim, as the poet put it.

The fingers feel the coolness of the stone a little,

Then the body’s fever prevails over it

and the cave stakes its soul and loses it

every moment, full of silence, without a drop of water.

             3

                        Remember the baths where you were murdered

I woke with this marble head in my hands;

it exhausts my elbow and I don’t know where to put it down.

It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream

so our life became one and it will be very difficult for it to separate again.

I look at the eyes: neither open nor closed

I speak to the mouth which keeps trying to speak

I hold the cheeks which have broken through the skin.

That’s all I’m able to do.

My hands disappear and come towards me

mutilated.

             4

                                                                     Argonauts

And a soul

if it is to know itself

must look

into its own soul:

the stranger and enemy, we’ve seen him in the mirror.

They were good, the companions, they didn’t complain

about the work or the thirst or the frost,

they had the bearing of trees and waves

that accept the wind and the rain

accept the night and the sun

without changing in the midst of change.

They were fine, whole days

they sweated at the oars with lowered eyes

breathing in rhythm

and their blood reddened a submissive skin.

Sometimes they sang, with lowered eyes

as we were passing the deserted island with the Barbary figs

to the west, beyond the cape of the dogs

that bark.

If it is to know itself, they said

it must look into its own soul, they said

and the oar’s struck the sea’s gold

in the sunset.

We went past many capes many islands the sea

leading to another sea, gulls and seals.

Sometimes disconsolate women wept

lamenting their lost children

and others frantic sought Alexander the Great

and glories buried in the depths of Asia.

We moored on shores full of night-scenes,

the birds singing, with waters that left on the hands

the memory of a great happiness.

But the voyages did not end.

Their souls became one with the oars and the oarlocks

with the solemn face of the prow

with the rudder’s wake

with the water that shattered their image.

The companions died one by one,

with lowered eyes. Their oars

mark the place where they sleep on the shore.

No one remembers them. Justice