Poem by Odysseus Elytis

THE SEA CLOVER

Once in a thousand years

         the spirits of the sea

in the darkened seaweed

         in the green pebbles

they plant it and it grows

         before the sunrise

they chant their charms and

         the clover of the sea rises

And whoever finds it does not die

         and whoever finds it does not die

Once in a thousand years

         nightingales sing differently

they don’t laugh nor they cry

         they only say they only say:

once in a thousand years

         love becomes eternal

wish it to be your luck wish it to be your luck

         and this year will bring you success

And from the places of the sky

         it will bring your love

The three leaved sea clover

         whoever finds it, send it to me

whoever finds it, send it to me

         the three leaved sea clover.

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EPIPHANY 1937

The flowering sea and the mountains in the waning

            moon

the great rock near the cactus pear trees and the asphodels

the water pitcher that wouldn’t go dry at the end of the day

and the empty bed near the cypresses and your hair

golden, the stars of the Swan and that star, Aldebaran.

I got hold of my life, I got hold of my life traveling

among yellow trees in the slanting rain

in silent slopes loaded with beech-tree leaves

no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark.

I got hold of my life; a line on your left hand

on your knee a scar, perhaps they still exist

in the sand of last summer, perhaps

they’re still there where the north wind blew and I hear

the unfamiliar voice around the frozen lake.

The faces I see don’t ask questions nor does the woman

stooping as she walks breastfeeding her baby.

I climb the mountains; bruised ravines; the snow

           covered

plain, up to the far end the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing

nor does the time enslaved in silent chapels, nor

do the hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads.

I got hold of my life whispering in the boundless silence

I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers

like the cypress’ breath that night

like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles

like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’.

I close my eyes searching for the secret encounter of waters

under the ice , the smile of the sea, the closed water wells

groping with my veins those veins

           that escape me

there, where the water lilies end and this man

who saunters as though blind on the snow of silence.

I got hold of my life, with him, searching for the water

           that touches you

heavy drops on the green leaves, on your face

in the vacant garden, drops on the motionless cistern

discovering a dead swan with its snow-white wings

living trees and your eyes fixated.

This road has no end, doesn’t change, no matter

           how hard you try

to recall your childhood years, the ones who left

            those

who got lost in their sleep, the pelagic graves

no matter how hard you ask the bodies you loved to stoop

under the hardened branches of the plane trees there

where the naked sun ray stood

and a dog leaped and your heart shuddered

the road has no change; I got hold of my life.

            The snow

and the frozen water in the horses’ hoof-marks.

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NIGHT OF A LONER

How bitter the furniture are in the room of a loner.

The table resembles an animal frozen in the cold;

the chair looks like a child lost in the snowed up forest;

the couch is a naked tree pushed over by the wind.

Yet, in a while, something is conducted in here:

a round, diaphanous silence like the glass

of the boatman and you, stooped over that glass,

you see the lucid sunlit sea floor with its crystal,

            dark green schisms

with the exquisite sea verdure; you stare at

the rosy, apathetic, big fishes

with their wide, gentle movements and you don’t know

whether they look for something, they lurk, take

refuge or saunter aimlessly, since their eyes

are so wide open as if totally shut.

This however is irrelevant. Isn’t really enough

that their movements are both beautiful

           and motionless?

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Fourth Canto

I stitch a leather latch on my door

keeping its serenity from copious

staggering fools laughing

as the ancient lascivious torch is lit

in the bowels of earth and

a battle of Giants reverberates

from one corner to another as

their God with stamina

of youth fights old cunning Death

over the meaning of a life or

a stigma the result being

leaves of grass stiffen against

the north wind and unfold their

satisfaction in sunshine’s arms

yet black velvet of

a hungry phallus climbs from

his subterranean realm to add

a laughing giggle to the lips of

day and turn ever-prosperous

fears to maverick months without

songs eluding to the graveness of this

absurdity and soil negates its

passive resolve to non-involvement

with opera music and spirited

fervor of lovemaking shredding even

the stiffest veil of darkness when

lips of the old woman with the

ironed breast lisps the strange

question and limp penis of

the old man ogling the moon

answers: I can do better

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ΤΟΥ ΠΛΟΙΟΥ

Τον μοιάζει βέβαια η μικρή αυτή,

με το μολύβι απεικόνισις του.

Γρήγορα καμωμένη, στο κατάστρωμα του πλοίου

ένα μαγευτικό απόγευμα.

Το Ιόνιον πέλαγος ολόγυρα μας.

Τον μοιάζει. Όμως τον θυμούμαι σαν πιο έμορφο.

Μέχρι παθήσεως ήταν αισθητικός,

κι αυτό εφώτιζε την εκφρασί του.

Πιο έμορφος με φανερώνεται

τώρα που η ψυχή μου τον ανακαλεί, απ’ τον Καιρό.

Απ’ τον Καιρό. Είν’ όλ’ αυτά τα πράγματα πολύ παληά—

το σκίτσο, και το πλοίο, και το απόγευμα.

ON THE SHIP

This small sketch

in pencil certainly resembles him.

Done rather fast, on the deck of the ship;

one enchanting afternoon.

The Ionian pelagos all around us.

It resembles him. However, I recall him handsomer.

He was sensitive to the point of suffering,

and this lighted his expression.

He appears even handsomer to me

now that my soul recalls him out of Time.

Out of Time. All these things are very old—

the drawing, and the ship, and the afternoon.

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Poem by Manolis Anagnostakis

I SPEAK

I speak of the last trumpeting of the defeated soldiers

of the last rags from our festive garments

of our children who sell cigarettes to the passers-by
I speak of the flowers that wilted on the graves and

rot in the rain

of the houses gaping with no windows like toothless

skulls

of girls begging and showing the scars of their breasts

I speak of the shoeless mothers who crawl among the ruins

of the conflagrated cities, the corpses piled in

the streets

the pimps poets who shiver by the front steps

during the night

I speak of the endless nights when the light is dimmed

at dawn

of the loaded trucks and the footsteps on the wet

cobblestones

I speak of the prison yard and of the tear of the moribund

but I speak more of the fishermen

who abandoned their nets and followed his steps

and when he got tired they didn’t rest

and when he betrayed them they didn’t reject him

and when he was glorified they turned their eyes the other way

and their comrades spat at them and crucified them

and serene, they took the road that had no end

and their glance didn’t ever darken nor bowed down

standing and lonely amid the horrible loneliness of the crowd

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YANNIS RITSOS-POEMS, Selected Books

Η Ελένη/Helen

Θαρρώ πως κάποιος άλλος μού αφηγήθηκε, με ολότελα άχρωμη φωνή, ένα βράδυ,
τα περιστατικά της ζωής μου· κι εγώ νύσταζα· μέσα μου ευχόμουν
να σταματήσει επιτέλους· να μπορέσω να κλείσω τα μάτια,
να κοιμηθώ. Κι όσο μιλούσε, για να κάνω κάτι, ν’ αντιστέκομαι στον ύπνο,
μετρούσα ένα ένα τα κρόσσια απ’ το σάλι μου, ρυθμίζοντας το μέτρημα
πάνω σ’ ένα κουτό, παιδιάστικο τραγούδι της τυφλόμυγας, ωσότου
να χάσει κάθε νόημα απ’ την επανάληψη. Μα ο ήχος διατηρείται —
θόρυβοι, γδούποι, συρσίματα, — το βουητό της σιωπής, ένα παράταιρο κλάμα,
κάποιος ξύνει τον τοίχο με τα νύχια του, κάποιο ψαλίδι πέφτει στα σανίδια,
κάποιος βήχει· — η παλάμη στο στόμα του, μη και ξυπνήσει έναν άλλον
που κοιμάται μαζί του —ίσως το θάνατό του·— σταματάει· ύστερα πάλι
εκείνο το σπειροειδές βουητό από ’να άδειο πηγάδι, κλεισμένο.

I believe that another person told me one night with a totally

              colorless voice

all my life’s events and I was so sleepy I wished inside me

that he’d finally stop so that I could close my eyes

and sleep And as long as he spoke just to do something

              to resist sleeping

I counted one by one the tassels of my shawl in a certain

             rhythm

with a silly childish game of the blind fly until its

meaning was lost in the repetition But the sound remains –

noises thuds crawling – the buzz of silence a discordant

             cry

someone scratches the wall with his nails a pair of scissors fall

              on the floor planks

someone coughs – his palm on his mouth so that he may not

              wake up the other

who sleeps with him – perhaps his death – he stops then

              again

that spiral buzz from an empty shut-off water well

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Harbor

In the harbor salinity smells

of unfinished voyages

dreamy seagulls

argue for people’s garbage

silent moment hovers between

excited activity of myriad people

going doing yelling living and

your landlocked aching mind 

longs for exotic locales

paradisiacal seabirds

abundance of food

no warring over crumbs of life

like in the harbor you always visit

hoping that you might start

an adventure to faraway lands

exquisite female bodies

as in your dreams

that salinity graces

with certain realism

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