REPETITIONS SECOND SERIES
Septirhea and Daphnephoria
We said: this year we’ll stay here. Enough of the stupid
trips.
Man’s only wisdom: loneliness. Therefore why we now
run, in the night, with torches, stumbling on rocks, not
knowing
the meaning of such thoughtless symbolisms — the putting up
of the wooden shack
the secret procession with a child up front, the arrow that’s
nailed to the door,
after the burning of the shack, people running to the Tempe
without turning their heads back not even once. And after
the sacrifices
we turn back loaded with oleander branches. The same and
the same every nine years (perhaps so we might forget in
between, and truly we forget). Eh, no,
this time we don’t take a step — thus we said. But when
we heard
the faraway nightly drums and the torch bearers passing
noiselessly in front of the house,
we couldn’t stop ourselves, we all ran to the road, mixed
with the people,
we took part in the fires, the running, the sacrifices and
returned through the Pythian Road towards Delphi, past
midnight, holding
oleander branches although we didn’t have (for years now)
anyone to crown —
and this was a sadness together with pride that no one knew
although they all considered us theirs. The shack was
still smoking at dawn. Returning home, we gazed at
the sky, clear, milky, light-blue, rosy; we noticed on the soil
the tumbled little paper flags, a child’s sandal, a kerchief with
sperm;
we looked in a serene, ecstatic way, with certain vague
politeness and nausea
with the happy tiredness and the blindness of the nightly
vigil,
like actors who took their make-up off, at the end of a nice
presentation, who leave retaining their sleepy hearing,
the futile buzz of the clapping and some bother, as some
gum is retained on their chins, from the graceful beard of
Oedipus or Prometheus, which they had put on for one
more night.
Manolis Aligizakis 