The Sentence to Oblivion

             Who would estimate for us the sentence to oblivion?

•                                                                
•                                                                       GEORGE SEFERIS

Stop, passer-by, before the still lake; the curly sea and the tormented ships

the roads that surrounded mountains and birthed stars

everything ends on this immense surface.

Now you may watch the swans calmly

look at them, they are white like a night’s sleep

without touching anywhere, they slide on a thin blade

that raises them slightly over the water.

They are like you, stranger, the still wings and you understand them

while the stone eyes of lions look at you

and the tree’s leaf remains uninscribed in the sky

and the slate pencil pierced the prison wall.

And yet the birds that slaughtered the village girls weren’t other than them

the blood turned the milk red on the street’s flagstones

and their horses noiselessly drew in the troughs

illegible shapes like molten lead.

And the night slowly tightened their leaning necks

that didn’t sing as there was no way to die but beat decapitating bones of people blindly.

And their wings cooled the horror.

And whatever happened had the serenity of what you see before you

they had the same serenity because there wasn’t any soul left in us to contemplate

other than the craving to incise some marks on the stones

that have now touched the bottom below memory.

We are with them as well, far away, very far away, stop passer-by

before the still lake with the unblemished swans

that travel like white rags in your mind

and they wake you up to things you lived but don’t remember.

You don’t even remember reading our writings on the stones

yet you remain ecstatic along with your sheep

that make your body big with their wool

now that you feel in your veins the sound of sacrifice.

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Χρυσόθεμις//Chrysothemis

Ήταν μια γεύση —δεν ξέρω— από βαθύ γαλάζιο διαλυμένο —
μια γεύση υπαρκτής ανυπαρξίας, υπογραμμισμένης κάποτε
από τη μετακίνηση κάποιου πουλιού στον ύπνο του· —μια σιγαλιά πολύβοη—
κι εγώ ήμουν ολόκληρη η σιωπή και μέρος της σιωπής. Δάγκωνα ένα μυρτόκλωνο
μη και φωνάξω. Γιατί το ’νιωθα: το στόμα μου μεγάλωνε
θαυμαστικό, για μια μεγάλη κραυγή, και τα δόντια μου
αραίωναν κι αυτά, χωρίζονταν, για ν’ αφήσουν διέξοδο
σ’ εκείνη την κραυγή. Την κράτησα. Διαλύθηκε εντός μου.
Αυτή ’ταν η σιωπή. Κι εγώ ήμουν αέρινη — μπορούσα να πετάξω.

This was a taste, I don’t know, of deep, faded light-blue,

a taste of existent inexistence, sometimes underlined by

the great movement of a bird in its sleep, a noisy calmness,

and I was part of silence, the whole silence. I bit on a myrtle

leaf so that I wouldn’t yell, since I felt it: my mouth was

enlarged to an exclamation ready to yell and my teeth

thinned up, separated one from the other to make room

for that yell. I withheld it. It vanished inside me. This was

silence and I was airy, I could fly.

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ΦΑΙΔΡΑ/PHAEDRA

(Απόσπασμα-Excerpt XXXVΙΙ)

Ίσως και να τον είδες ένα απόγευμα, αργά προς το βράδυ,
αυτόν με την άδεια βαλίτσα, που προσποιείται τον κουτσό, (κι ίσως να ’ναι)
αυτόν που κάθε τόσο σταματάει από το βάρος του άδειου —
αφήνει τη βαλίτσα του στο πεζοδρόμιο ή στη σκάλα,
σκουπίζει τον ιδρώτα του με ανάστροφο χέρι, και πάλι
σηκώνει τη βαλίτσα του, ακούγοντας μέσα της τον κρότο
από δυο γυάλινους βόλους (ο ένας κίτρινος, ο άλλος γαλάζιος)
που κυλούν και χτυπιούνται.

Perhaps you saw him in the afternoon, closer to evening,

the person with the empty suitcase who pretended to limp

(perhaps he is) the person who often stops from the weight

of emptiness — he leaves his suitcase on the sidewalk or

the stairs, wipes his sweat with the back of his hand, then

he lifts the suitcase again, hearing inside it, the clank

of two glass balls (one yellow, the other light-blue) which

roll and hit each other.

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