 Greek Poets On Their Homeland
Rough, but a mother of men, and the sweetest of lands to me. Homer, Odyssey ix.27.  PSALM AND MOSAICFOR A SPRINGTIME IN ATHENS Odysseas Elytis, translated by Nanos Valaoritis Spring violet fragment Spring down of a dove Spring multicoloured dust On the open books and papers A warm little breeze was blowing With gupsies it caught up Like Kites In the air And birds trying out their new rudders ................................................................... Along a wire that flashed with fire On a streetcorner with Caryatids A tram Screeched by The sun in the empty terrain scraped with tongs The nettles and the snail-marked grass....  OUR
LANDYannis Ritsos, translated by Edmund Keeley We climbed the hill to look over our land: fields poor and few, stones, olive trees. Vineyards head toward the sea. Beside the plow a small fire smoulders. We shaped the old man's clothes into a scarecrow against the ravens. Our days are making their way toward a little bread and great sunshine. Under the poplars a straw hat beams. The rooster on the fence. The cow in yellow. How did we manage to put our house and our life in order with a hand made of stone? Up on the lintel there's soot from the Easter candles, year by year: tiny black crosses marked there by the dead returning from the Resurrection Service. This land is much loved with patience and dignity. Every night, out of the drywell, the statues emerge cautiously and climb the trees.  TEMPTATIONDionysios Solomos, translated by Rae Dalven Love dances with yellow-haired April; it is nature's good, sweet season, and in the swelling shadows enfolding dew and musk are langorous bird songs yet unheard. Clear, sweet, graceful waters pour into the musk-scented abyss, taking its musk and leaving its freshness, all revealing the wealth of their source to the sun, darting here, there, like nightingales. So too life gushes forth on earth, and sky and wave. But on the waters of the lake, white and still, still as far as the eye can see and clear to the depths, the butterfly which makes its fragrant bed within the heart of the wild lily, sports with is small strange shadow. "Lovely dreamer, tell me what you have seen this night?" "A night full of wonder, a night sown with magic! No movement on earth or skies or seas, not even as much as the bee makes near the tiny flower. Around something motionless, whitening in the lake, only the full moon moved and a graceful girl rises clothed in its light."  LIFE IMMOVABLECostis Palamas, translated by Philip Sherrard ...."In the sun-glad nakedness of the Athenian day If you should imagine Something beast like unclothed, Something like a leafless No shade conferring tree, An unchiselled marble, A body slender, lean, Something bare, uncovered, In the open space Which but two eyes of flame Show to be alive; Something which from the satyrs Descends, and is wild, And its voice is silver, Do not flee; it is I, The satyr. Like the olive tree I am rooted here, And with my pipe's refrain I make the breezes faint. I play and see! there mate, Worship and are worshipped, I play and see! there dance Man, element, beast."  George Seferis, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard Our country is enclosed, all mountains which have the low sky for a roof day and night. We have no rivers, we have no wells, we have no springs, only a few cisterns--and these empty--which echo and which we worship. A sound stagnant, hollow, the same as our loneliness the same as our love, the same as our bodies. We find it strange that once we were able to build our houses, huts, and sheepfolds. And our marriages, the cool coronals and the fingers become enigmas inexplicable to our soul. How were our children born, how did they grow? Our country is enclosed. The two black Symplegades enclose it. When we go down to the harbours on Sunday to breath we see, alight in the sunset, the broken timbers of voyages unfinished bodies that no longer know how to love.  Page Design, Poets' Portraits, Artwork by Anna Mavromatis Copyright © 1998 . All rights reserved. Please e-mail any questions or comments to:
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