REPETITIONS, SECOND SERIES
The Apples of the Hesperides I
We never liked the demi-gods, the gods, the super-heroes,
the over-complicated myth
with the many angles, we couldn’t get to its meaning.
We simply guessed it hid many trivial things; it lacked
that clear nakedness of the unknown and inexplicable. But
we liked the locale, where the day meets the night and
the apple trees, full of blossoms, turn white in the twilight
or get heavy with their golden apples. We also liked how
the Argonauts saw from their ship a bit beyond the lake
Tritonida, the corpse of the Dragon and the sad Hesperides.
But most of all
we liked that little pillow which Hercules asked to rest
his head from the weight of the Cosmos; this little
cunningness, so human, that had defeated the ill-will
of Atlas, revealed all the myth to us and graced it with
such a vague, familiar, an almost esthetic brilliance.
Manolis Aligizakis 