Neo-Hellene Poets, an Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry

Poem by George Seferis

IV

Argonauts

And the soul

if it is to know itself

must look

into its own soul

the stranger and the enemy, we have seen him in the mirror.

They were good boys, the comrades, they didn’t complain

about the tiredness or the thirst or the frost

they had the behaviour of the trees and the waves

that accept the wind and the rain

that accept the night and the sun

without changing in the middle of change.

They were good boys, for days on

they sweated at the oars with lowered eyes

breathing in rhythm

and their blood reddened a submissive skin.

Sometimes they sang, with lowered eyes

when we passed by the deserted island with the prickly pear trees

toward the west, beyond the cape of the dogs

that bark.

If it is to know itself, they said

it must look into its own soul, they said

and the oars struck the gold of the sea

in the sunset.

We passed by many capes, many islands, the sea

that brings another sea, gulls and seals.

Sometimes grieving women wept

lamenting their lost children

and others angrily sought Alexander the Great

and glories lost in the depths of Asia.

We moored on shores filled with night fragrances

with bird chirps, with waters that left on our hands

memory of a great happiness.

But the voyages did not end.

Their souls became one with the oars and the oarlocks

with the solemn face of the prow

with the rudder’s wake

with the water that shattered their image.

The comrades died one by one

with lowered eyes. Their oars

point to the place where they sleep on the shore.

No one remembers them. Justice.

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Constantine Cavafy – Poems

OROPHERNIS

He whose handsome,

delicate face seems to be smiling

on the four drachmas coin,

he is Orophernis son of Ariarathis.

As a child they ousted him from Cappadocia,

out of his father’s magnificent palace

and sent him to grow up

in Ionia, to be forgotten among strangers.

Oh, those beautiful Ionian nights

when fearlessly, and clearly in a Hellenic way

he got to know the fullness of carnal pleasure.

In his heart, always an Asian;

but in his manners and in his speech Greek,

dressed up in turquoise, in Greek chiton

his body fragrant with jasmine,

among the handsome Ionian youths,

the most handsome, the most ideal.

Later when the Syrians entered

Cappadocia, and made him a king

he dedicated himself and his monarchy

to enjoying in a new pleasure everyday,

to greedily gather gold and silver,

and to delight, and to boast,

watching his riches piling and shining.

As for the care of the place, and governing—

he had no idea what was happening around him.

The Cappadocians quickly removed him;

and he ended up in Syria, in the palace

of Demetrios, where he lazed around partying.

One day, though, his great idleness was

interrupted by unusual thoughts;

he remembered that from his mother Antiochida

and from the old Stratoniki

he was connected to the crown

of Syria, almost a Seleucid.

For a while he got out of the lust and drunkenness,

and ineptly, and half dazed

he felt a longing to scheme something,

to do something, to plan something,

but he failed miserably, and got worn out.

His end was written somewhere but got lost;

or perhaps history passed it by,

and rightfully so, not bothering

to record such a paltry event.

He who on the four drachmas coin

left the charm of his beautiful youth,

the light of his youthful beauty,

an aesthetic memory of that Ionian boy,

is Orophernis, son of Ariarathis.

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Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume II

THE BRIDGE (excerpt)

Truly how beautiful and strange life is, isn’t? As

I return to you with another thankfulness

and I ask you for a piece of your daily bread,

a hard part of your responsibility,

a straw mattress, just outside in the hallway

like the one we shared in our detention camp,

when each sharing was another augmentation,

when “we divided our cigarette in two

and our hearts in the four points of the horizon”,

there I go again repeating my old verses. You see?

The need for a piece of bread, for a kiss, for air,

for friendship doesn’t humiliate us, a window towards

the east that we might breathe when night falls,

justifiably letting our arm rest for a while,

serene and idle on the shoulder of silence,

to be rocked by the rhythmic breath of silence —

this hand that will labour and will be rewarded, that

will have lost the crooked shape of theft,

of supplication, of beggary, of charity and will be

extended, honest and positive and straight in the palm

of life with the modest dignity of knowledge that

it digs, writes, gives, and deserves to take, while

the light, lawful and useful, will turn into a sphere

in the eager contour of its palm, like a fresh,

diaphanous, warm egg of an eternal birth.

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Ithaca Series, Poem # 628

Painting byTineke Storteboom

God

Most of the time,

man steers his ship

by the middle course

without much difficulty,

as if his experience

had put him on automatic pilot

of human reason,

tolerance, and love.

But sometimes it‘s like

an invisible, inhuman hand

disconnects the automatic pilot

and steers the ship deliberately

right onto the rocks and blows up the mountain

with the people of the country.

along with the crew of the ship

in an uncontrollable outburst of rage.

Most of the time,

the hand uses

the name of God.

Thór Stefánsson, Iceland

ΘΕΟΣ

Συχνά ο άνθρωπος στο μέσο δρόμο

οδηγεί το πλοίο του

και δίχως δυσκολία

αυτόματος πιλότος οδηγούμενος

απ’ το λογικό, υπομονή κι αγάπη.

Κι άλλες φορές ένα αόρατο χέρι

αποσυνδέει τον αυτόματο πιλότο

και κατευθύνει το πλοίο του

στα βράχια και στο βουνό να εκτιναχτεί

μ’ όλον τον πληθυσμό του τόπου

και με το πλήρωμα

σε πανικό αλλοπρόσαλο.

Τις πιο πολλές φορές

όλα τα κάνει στ’ όνομα

του Θεού.

Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη//Translated by Manolis Aligizakis

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume IV

Repetitions I

From Above

Green darkness descends from the high hill tops

to the red freshly ploughed fields. Only the heliotropes

with the ancient cypresses still gleam in the dusk. The

horses stay still in the deserted yards. No any bird singing

at the tree top. Sharp rocks, stony thrones, pulse of

a vein under the pine needles. Sad soil, Hellenic soil.

A moustached cloud charges in the twilight towards

the secretly river. Hellenic soil, proud air, Eros, health,

gazing out, eternal smells, manly sadness under

the shadows of the eagles and the stars.

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