Yannis RITSOS, ORESTE, english translation
Two young men, about twenty years old, pause at the gateway with an expression as if they are trying to remember something, to recognize something. At the same time everything looks unimaginably familiar and affecting to them, only somewhat smaller—much smaller—because of all they have seen abroad, in other lands and at other times— everything much smaller, the walls and the great stones, the lion gate, the palace under the shadow of the mountain. It is still summer. Night is falling. The private cars and large tourist buses have gone. The place relaxes in the silence—the mouths of ancient tombs and monuments breathe deeply. A scrap of newspaper stirs in the burned grass, blown by a vague wind. There comes the sound of the nightwatchman's steps, and the great key that locks the inner door of the tower. Then, as if set free in the night's warm freshness, the crickets begin beating their tiny drums. Somewhere, behind the mountain, lurks an unidentified brightness—perhaps it is the moon. And at exactly the same moment, from the stone steps, can be heard—sharp, harsh, jarring—a woman's lamentation. The two young men cannot be seen. They merge with the lower part of the wall like two great shadows. After a little, one wipes the sweat from his face with his handkerchief, gestures casually in the direction of the sound, and speaks to the other, who always remains affectionately silent and attentive, like Pylades:Listen—it hasn't stopped yet, she hasn't gotten tired. Intolerable,
on this Greek night—so warm, so calm,
so independent of us and indifferent, allowing us
a respite—to be in its midst, to watch from its midst
and from far off at the same time; to see the night
naked like the most insignificant voices of its crickets,
like the slightest shivers of its black skin.
How did it happen that we, too, remained independent, with the
delightful pleasure of indifference, of tolerance, beyond everything, in the midst of everything, in the midst of ourselves—alone, together,
under no obligation, without competition, rivalry, censure, without
any expectations or demands placed on us by others? Thus I need only to look at the thong of your sandal, which sets apart for me your big toe, so irreproachable, turns it toward a position of my own, toward a secret place, my own, near the oleanders,
and the silver leaves of night that fall on your shoulder
and the sound of the fountain flowing imperceptibly under our nails.
Listen to her—her voice spreads over her like a deep-arched vault,
and she herself is suspended in her voice
like the clapper of a bell, and is struck by and strikes the bell,
though there is neither feast nor funeral, only the immaculate solitude of
the rocks and, below, the humble quiet of the countryside—underlining this unjustifiable passion—which move around her as innocent children's kites circle countless stars with the light papery rustle of their long tails.
Let's move a little away from here, so the woman's voice won't reach
us; let's stand further down; no, not at the ancestral tombs; no libations tonight. I don't want to cut my hair—this hair
where your hand has so often wandered. What a beautiful night— our own in a sense, receding, torn from us, and we can hear it like a dark river flowing down to the sea,
gleaming now and then under branches, to the sparkling of the stars, amid this powerful, pitiless summer, with imperceptible pauses, momentary, with haphazard jumps (maybe
someone is throwing stones into the river)—this small leap and the vinegrowers' greenhouse panes shining near ground level.
Strange,
they prepared a complete life for me and for this I prepared myself. And
now, before this gate, I feel completely unprepared— the two marble lions—did you see them?—they've been tamed, those lions, that started out in our childhood years so resolute, wild, almost, manes bristling, poised for a daring leap, they've settled down now, reconciled, at the two upper corners of the
outer gate, with lifeless pelts, vacant eyes—they frighten no one—with the
expression of whipped dogs, not even especially unhappy,
faithful, blind dogs, without rancour,
tongues licking, from time to time, night's soft warm sole.
Unprepared, yes indeed—I can't do it; I lack that essential
relationship to the place, the time, the situation,
the facts. It's not cowardice. I'm unprepared
before the threshold of the deed, a total stranger
before the destiny that others have decreed for me. How is it
that others establish our fate, little by little, prescribe it for us
and we accept it? How is it that with the smallest threads
of a few of our moments they weave for us
our whole time, harsh and dark, thrown
like a veil from our head to our feet, covering
our faces and hands completely, where they've secreted
an unknown knife—quite unknown—and it lights up,
with its harsh glint, a landscape, not our own—
that I know; it is not our own. And how does it happen
that our own fate accepts it, stands back
and watches, like a stranger, ourselves and our strange fate,
dumb, austere, resigned, aloof,
not even with the dignity of magnanimity or stoicism,
without even disappearing, without dying,
and that we remain, prey, it may be, to a different fate,
but to one only—not in two minds and divided. Look at it, still there,
as though drowsy—one eye closed, the other dilated,
letting us see it watching us and discerning
our endless hesitation, with neither approval nor disapproval.
Two opposing forces seem to pull equally on our legs and one force moves far further away than the other, stretching the stride of our legs to the point of dismemberment; and the
head is a knot that still rules this weary body, although, I know, legs are made to move
one by one of their own accord, both in one rhythm, in one direction, in the fields below, near the clusters of grapes, as far as the reddening
horizon beyond, moving our whole bodies—or perhaps
because of this great and terrible stride of ours we were fashioned over the unknown abyss, over graves and our grave? I don't know.
And yet, beneath the many layers of shock and fear, I divine
endless silence spreading out—justice,
a self-existent balance that contains us
in the order of seeds and stars. Did you notice?—at noon
as we were coming here, a cloud-shadow passed across the plain
covering wheatfields, vines, olive trees,
horses, birds, leaves—a transparent sketch
of a distant landscape of the infinite, here upon the ground;
and the peasant who was trudging along at the far end of the field
seemed to be holding, thrust under his left armpit,
the whole shadow of the cloud, like a huge cloak—
majestic, yet simple as his sheep.
Thus the earth becomes familiar with the infinite, taking on something
of blue and of vagueness; and the infinite, in its turn,
takes on something from earth, chestnut and warm, something of leaves,
and of sheepfolds and roots, something of the eyes
of that patient cow (remember?)
and the strong legs of the farmer disappearing in the distance.
Meanwhile this woman shows no sign of being quiet. Listen to her.
How can she herself not hear that voice of hers? How can she stay
shut suffocatingly in one instant of past time,
past feelings? How can she, and with what,
renew this passion for retribution and the voice of passion
when all the echoes belie her, mock her even—the echoes
from the porticos, columns, stairways, furniture,
from the.jars in the garden, the caves of Zara, the water channel,
from the stables below for the horses, the guards' watchtowers on the
hills, from the pleats on the statues of women in the outer courtyard and the noble phalluses of the stone runners and discus throwers?
The vases in the house still, as it were, set against her lamentations
the merciful gesture of a few tender-hearted roses
arranged charmingly by Mother's own hand,
there on the carved sideboard; in front of the great, ancestral mirror,
next to a light, reflection against reflection, watery—I remember it
from my childhood years—it remains for me unshadowed—
watery light, impalpable, neutral—an unknown quantity—
timeless, innocent—something smooth and wonderful
like the soft hair at the nape of girls' necks or on the lips of youths,
like the smell of a newly bathed body on the sheets,
the warm freshness in the breath of a summer night, filled with stars.
She understands nothing, not even the echoes
that mock her harsh voice. I am afraid; I'm powerless
to respond to her challenge—so exorbitant and at the same time so
comic—
to these pompous words of hers, old-fashioned, as if unearthed
in a linen chest "from the good old days" (as the old folks say),
like great flags, unironed, the seams of which have absorbed
naphthalene, denial, silence—so very old
that no one doubts their age, and they persist
in flapping with archaic gestures above the unsuspecting passers-by—
the busy ones, the tired ones—above the asphalt-covered streets,
modest, for all their breadth and length, with elegant shop windows
all ties, crystal, bathing suits, hats, gloves, brushes,
which correspond quite beautifully to our needs of the moment
and so also to the age-old needs of life that rule us.
And she persists in preparing hydromel and food for the dead
who no longer thirst or drink, no longer have mouths
or dream of restoration or revenge. All this invokes
their infallible nature (—what way infallible?) perhaps to escape
the responsibility of her own choice and decision—
when the teeth of the dead, bare, scattered on the ground,
are white seeds in an endless black valley
sprouting all by themselves, infallible, invisible, pure white trees
that glow in the moonlight, till the end of time.
Ah, how can her mouth bear those words,
drawn forth, yes, from old linen chests (like the ones
decorated with big náil-studs), dragged out
from among Mother's old hats, in an outmoded style,
which Mother no longer wears-—she despises them. Did you see her
this afternoon in the garden?—how beautiful she still is—she hasn't
aged at all, perhaps because she watches time and manages it every moment—I mean she's renewed by the recognition of the youth she's losing—perhaps in this way she gets it back.
And Mother's voice, how real, ordinary, precise—
she can make the biggest words seem natural,
or the smallest, in their deepest significance, like:
"A butterfly came in through the window,"
or: "The world is unbearably wonderful,"
or: "They should use more blueing on the linen napkins,"
or: "One note of this nocturnal fragrance escapes me," and she laughs,
perhaps to anticipate someone else who might laugh—
This depth of understanding and tender indulgence
for everyone and everything—almost contempt—always amazed and
alarmed her with that conscious, lofty dignity of hers, mingling her tiny, artful, complex laugh with the little hiss of the match and the match flame, as she lit the hanging lamp in the dining room, and there she was, lit up from
below, with the light focused more strongly on her shapely chin and on her thin, flaring nostrils, that for a moment paused to breath in and narrow, as if she would stay near us, stop, be motionless, lest she dissolve like a column of blue smoke in the night wind, lest the trees seize her with their long branches, lest she wear a star's thimble for some endless piece of handiwork—
Thus Mother always found her most precise movement and stillness
precisely at the moment of her absence—we were always afraid
she would vanish before our very eyes, be taken up, rather—whenever
she bent to tie her sandal, which left uncovered her marvellous, painted, curved toenails, or whenever she arranged her hair in front of the big mirror with a movement of her hands• so graceful, youthful, and light,
she might have been rearranging three or four stars on the world's
forehead, or setting two daisies to be kissed beside the fountain or watching with the effrontery of affection two dogs making love right in the middle of the dusty road at noon, in burning summer. Mother was so simple and persuasive and at the same time strong, commanding, and unfathomable.
Perhaps that was what my sister never forgave her—her eternal youth—
that old woman of a child, cautious by contrast, given to denial
of beauty and delight—ascetic, odious in her moderation,
solitary and detached. Even her clothes,
stubbornly old-womanish, baggy, tattered, old,
and the cord at her waist limp, worn out,
like a bloodless vein around her belly (and she tightened it even so)
like the cord of a fallen curtain that no longer opens or closes
thus revealing obliquely a landscape of perpetually crabbed harshness
with jagged rocks and huge trees, naked, branches stretching up
into hackneyed, pompous clouds; and there, in the distance,
the barely perceptible presence of a lost sheep,
a living white spot, a speck of softness—it can't be seen—
and that same sister of mine an upright rock
encased in its hardness—intolerable. Listen to her,
almost quibbling—she keeps a stern eye on Mother, is continually
provoked
whenever Mother puts a flower in her hair or her bosom,
whenever she walks down the corridor with her confident, lilting steps,
when she tilts her head, in melancholy relaxation, a little to one side,
letting fall a small drop of sound, charged with meaning, from her long
earring onto her shoulder, that she alone hears—her own sweet prerogative. And she, the Other, is furious.
She sustains her anger with the pitch of that voice of hers—
(if she ever lost it, what would become of her?) —I think she fears the
accomplishment of her revenge, lest nothing be left of her at all. She never heard the grass rustle secretly in the night from the passing of a lithe, unseen man outside the window, at dinner time; she never saw the ladder, propped without reason
against a high, bare wall one holiday; she paid no attention
to that "without reason"; she didn't notice
the tassel of a corn-ear grazing the sole of a tiny cloud,
or the shape of a jug against the starry sky, or a sickle
abandoned, all by itself, beside the well, one noontime,
or the loom's shadow in a locked room, when they fumigate the
vineyards and the laborers' voices can be heard below in the fields, while a sparrow, all alone in all the world, pecking in the courtyard at insects, seeds, a few crumbs, tries to spell out its freedom. She saw nothing, ever.
Completely blind, imprisoned in her blindness. But how can it be that she lives a life entirely based on opposition to another, entirely out of hatred for another, and not out of love of her own life, without any place of her own? And what do they want? What do they want from me? "Vengeance, vengeance," they cry. Let them take care of it by themselves, then, since vengeance nourishes them.
I don't want to hear her any more. I can't stand it. No one
has the right to control my eyes, my mouth, my hands,
these feet of mine that tread upon the earth. Give me your hand. Let's go.
Long nights, summery, perfect, our own, assorted stars, sweaty armpits, shattered glasses— an insect hums politely in the ear of tranquility, lizards warm at the feet of young male statues, slugs on the garden benches or even in the locked forge, strolling on the huge anvil, leaving behind on the black iron white trails of sperm and spittle.
Let's leave this land of Mycenae behind us once again—how the earth
here smells of bronze-rust and black blood. Attica's lighter. Isn't it? I sense that now, this appointed hour, is the hour of my final abdication. I don't want to be their theme, their servant, their instrument, not even their ruler.
I too have a life of my own and I must live it. Not vengeance— what could it bring back from the dead, one death more, and that a violent one?—what could it add to life? Years have gone by. I don't feel hatred any more; perhaps I've forgotten? grown weary? I
don't know. Indeed, I feel a certain sympathy for the murderess—she took the
measure of great chasms^ great understanding has widened her eyes in the darkness and she sees—she sees the inexhaustible, the unattainable, and the
unalterable. She sees me.
I too want to see Father's murder in death's palliative generality,
to forget it in that totality of death
which awaits us too. This night has taught me
the innocence of all usurpers. And we are all
usurpers of something—some of the people, some of the throne,
others of love or even of death; my sister
usurps my own life, and I yours.
Oh my dear, how particularly you share in all
these strange, foolish undertakings. And yet, my hand
is yours; you too must take it, usurp it—your own,
and because of this also my own; take it, clasp it; you expect it to be
free from retributions, reprisals, recollections,
free—I too want that,
so that it belongs wholly to me, and only thus
can I give it wholly to you. Forgive me
this secretive solitude and division—you know it well—
that splits me in two. What a beautiful night—
a damp smell of oregano, thyme, capers—
or perhaps geraniums?—I confuse fragrances; sometimes,
blood smells of sea salt, and sperm of the forest—
a willful displacement perhaps—that's what I seek tonight,
like that soldier who told us, one night in Athens, how when
the beach was loud with groans and the clang of arms,
he hid in the withered bushes, above the shore and
watched in the moonlight the swaying shadow of his manhood on his
thigh like a doubtful erection, striving to exist, testing
his willpower over his own body, for a displacement away from the plain of death, in hope of a dubious independence.
Let's go further down; I can't bear to hear her; her cries
batter my nerves and my dreams, just as those oars
battered the floating slaughtered corpses
momentarily lit up by the ships' flares, the shooting stars of August,
and they were all agleam, young and erotic, unbelievably immortal,
in a watery death that cooled their backs, their ankles, their legs.
How quietly the seasons change. Night falls, limitless.
A wicker chair remains alone, forgotten under the trees,
amid the light dampness and mist given off by the earth.
There is no sorrow; scarcely any expectation; nothing.
A motionless motion spreads out to yesterday and to tomorrow.
The tortoise is a rock in the grass; after a little it stirs—
unforeseen calm, hidden complicity, happiness.
A tiny spot of vacancy remains in your smile—perhaps
because of what I'm telling you or what I may tell you, things I don't yet
know myself, things I have not yet found in the rhythm of speech that travels ahead of my thoughts—far ahead—that reveals to me my own rhythm and my self. Like that time in the arena, when the runners arrived, bathed in sweat, and I noticed one who had tied a bit of string around his ankle, for no reason at all, quite at random. Just that, and nothing else.
Sacrifices, then, and heroics—what difference do they make? Years and
years. Maybe we really came for these small revelations of the great wonder that no longer contains small and great, nor murder and sin.
All one passion—enchantment and amazement (as Mother would
sometimes say), when the leaves of night—broad, fleshy, cool— brush our foreheads, and the falling fruit is a message, fixed and incommunicable, like the circle, the triangle, or the rhombus. I muse over a saw rusting in an abandoned woodshop,
and the house numbers changing position out there on the horizon— 3, 7, 9—the innumerable number. Listen; she's stopped.
A vast, inachievable quiet—I think thousands of pure black horses
must be climbing darkly up to the mountaintop, while on the far side
a golden river runs downhill toward the plain
with its lifeless springs, uninhabited camps and stables
where the straw steams with an ancient heat of stray beasts,
and the dogs, with their tails hanging, wander
like dark scars in the silver depth of night.
She's stopped at last—peace—deliverance. It's beautiful.
Look—the shadows of hurrying insects over the wall
leaving behind a dewdrop or a tiny bell
that rings a little later. Beyond, a brightness—
a prolonged suspicion, purple—the moon,
small, solitary conflagration behind the trees, the chimneys, and the
weathervanes, burning the great thorn trees and yesterday's newspapers, leaving behind this approval—glorification, almost— of not waiting, not hoping, of manifest vanity, moving out to intrepid isolation, to the end of the road with the ghostly, violet passage of a cat.
When the moon appears, the houses sink down to the plain below, the corn-ears crackle with frost or from the law of growth, whitewashed trees gleam on their boles like agonized columns in a silent war, while the signs of little shops hang like fulfilled oracles over the locked doors.
Countrymen will go to sleep with their huge hands on their bellies and the birds with their tiny feet curved lightly around branches in their sleep
as if they made no effort to hang on, as if effort were nothing,
as if nothing had happened, as if nothing were about to happen—
light, light, as if the sky had penetrated their wings, as if someone were walking the long narrow corridors, lamp in hand, and all the windows were open and outdoors could be heard beasts calmly ruminating in the midst of eternity.
I love this fresh quietude. Somewhere, close, in an upper gallery,
a young woman will be combing her long hair
while her spread-out underclothing rests beside her in the moonlight.
Everything fluid, smooth, happy. Great water jars in the bath rooms—
I imagine them pouring water on the necks and breasts of young girls—
small bars of sweet-scented soap slither on the tiles,
bubbles rise through the noise of water and laughter,
one woman has slipped and fallen,
the moon has slipped through the skylight,
everything's slippery with soap—you can't get hold of things
or keep a hold on yourself—this slipperiness
is the returning rhythm of life; the women laugh
shaking white, light-as-air mounds of soapsuds
above their little forests of pubic hair. Is this what happiness is?
This night of waiting has left me an opening to the outside
and to within. I can't describe it exactly. Perhaps it is
huge masks destroyed, metal buckles,
and the sandals of the dead, warped from the damp,
moving all by themselves, as though walking without feet—but they
don't walk; and that great net in the bath—who wove it?— the knot, the knot—unloosable—black—it was not Mother who wove it.
An immense shadow spreads out over the arches;
a stone works loose and falls into the ravine—and yet no one passed
by-then nothing; and then a branch that snaps from the light pressure of the sky. Small frogs jump, soft and silent, in the damp grass. Peace.
Ash-gray mice fall into the wells and drown,
dense constellations slowly turn; down inside there
they toss the trash from banquets—pitchers, cups, mirrors, and chairs,
animal bones, lyres, and clever exchanges. The wells never fill up.
Something like fingers of light and freshness pass in succession over our
chests, drawing circle-traces around the nipples,
and we too are winnowed by the air, circle upon circle, around a center
unknown, ambiguous, and yet fixed—endless circles
around a mute cry, around a knife thrust; and the knife
is driven into our hearts, I think, forming the center of our hearts
like the stake in the middle of the threshing floor up there, on the hill,
and around the horses, ears of corn, oil lamps, mule drivers and reapers beside the hayricks, with the moon's head on their
shoulders, hearing the neighing of horses till the very end of their sleep, hearing the bulls piss among willows and brambles, the thousand feet of the millipede on the jar, the slithering of the quiet snake in the olive grove, and the cracking of heated stones as they cool and contract.
One erotic word stays forever locked in our mouths, inexpressible,
like a pebble in our sandals or even a nail; you get tired
of stopping, removing it, loosening your straps,
being delayed—the secret rhythm of your walking has possessed you
more than the annoyance of the pebble, more
than the stubborn reminder of your weariness,
your procrastination; and there is still
a small thorny exultation and recollection
in the fact you've brought that pebble back from a beloved shore,
from a pleasant walk with good conversation, with watery images,
when the tobacco merchants' talk could be heard in the seaside taverna
with the song of the seashells and the song of the sea,
far off, far off, lost, near, alien, our own.
That wretched woman is still quiet. In the midst of her silence I seem to
hear the justice of her claim—
ЦЩ she is so vulnerable in her fury, so wronged,
with her bitter hair fallen about her shoulders like grass on a tomb, walled up in her narrow righteousness. Perhaps she's fallen asleep, perhaps she is even dreaming of an innocent place with good animals, whitewashed houses, the smell of warm bread, and roses.
And now I remember—I don't know why—that cow we saw, toward evening, in a field in Attica—remember? She stood, just unyoked from the plough, and looked around,
with two thin streams of vapor from her nostrils steaming over the purple, violet, and golden sunset, mute, scarred on sides, back, beaten about the forehead, familiar perhaps with resignation and obedience, implacability and hatred in her acquiescence.
Between her two horns she held
the heaviest piece of the sky like a crown. In a little
she lowered her head and drank water from the stream,
and licked with her bloody tongue that other
cool tongue of her waterborne image, as if she were licking
broadly, calmly, maternally, inevitably,
from the outside, her own inner wound, as if she were licking
the silent, vast round wound of the world—perhaps also to quench her
thirst— perhaps only our own blood will do to quench our thirst—who knows?
Later she raised her head from the water, not touching anything,
herself untouched and calm, like a saint,
and only between her feet, both rooted in the river:
there remained a small changing pool of blood from her lips,
a red pool, in the shape of a map,
which little by little widened and dispersed; it disappeared
as if her blood were flowing far away, freed, without pain,
into an invisible vein of the world; and she was calm
precisely for this reason; as if she had learned
that our own blood is not lost, that nothing is lost,
nothing, nothing is lost in this vast nothing,
disconsolate and pitiless, incomparable,
so sweet, so consoling, so nothing.
This nothing is our familial infinite. Useless, then, this gasping for breath, or anxiety, or faith. Just such a cow I drag with me, in my shadow—not tied:
she follows me of her own accord—she is my shadow on the road when there's a moon; she is my shadow on a closed door; and you're always aware of this: the shadow is pliant, bodiless; the shadows of her horns may just be two pointed wings and maybe you can fly , and perhaps you can get past the locked door some other way.
And now I remember (this, too, may have no significance) the cow's
eyes—dark, blind, huge, convex
like two hillocks of darkness or black glass; their surface
faintly reflected a church tower, and the jackdaws
perching upon the cross; and then someone called out
and the birds disappeared from the cow's eyes. I think the cow
was a symbol in some ancient religion. Not for me
such ideas and such abstractions. An ordinary cow
for the villagers' milk and for the plough, with all the wisdom
of her labor, her endurance, her usefulness. And yet,
at the last moment, just before the animals returned to the village—
remember?— she let out a heartrending bellow, toward the horizon, so loud that from branches around the swallows and sparrows
scattered, horses too, goats and farmers, leaving her alone in a naked circle, out of which rose, much higher, in the distance, the spiral of constellations, until the cow ascended; no, no, I think my eye picked her out from among the herd climbing the overgrown path, quiet, docile, toward the village, at the hour when lamps were lit in the courtyards,
behind the trees.
See where dawn is breaking. There—and the first cock crows in the
yard. The gardener's woken up; he'll plant a sapling or two in the garden. The
familiar noises of working tools—saws, pickaxes—
and the courtyard fountain; someone washing; the smell of the earth; water boiling in coffeepots; peaceful columns of smoke above the roofs; a warm odor of sage. So we've survived even this night.
Let us now lift up this funeral urn with my purported ashes—
the recognition scene will begin in a moment.
They will each of them find in me that person they expected, they'll find the just man, in line with their legislation, and only you and I, only the two of us, will know that in this urn I am holding my own real ashes.
And while the others are triumphing through my deed, the two of us
will weep over the gleaming, bloody sword, worthy of glory,
will weep for these ashes, this corpse, whose place
has been taken by another, completely covering his flayed features
with a golden, respectable, venerable mask,
perhaps even useful, with its crudely worked design,
as a precept, an example, opium for the people, terror for tyrants, an
exercise that slowly, heavily, pursues history with repeated deaths and triumphs, not with terrible knowledge (impossible for the multitude) but with hard action and easy faith, inflexible, necessary, unfortunate faith, disproved a thousand times and held fast a thousand more tooth and nail by the soul of man—ignorant faith that does great deeds secretly, antlike, in the dark.
And I, the faithless one, choose this faith (the others do not choose me),
yet in full personal knowledge. I choose
the knowledge and the action of death that enhances life. Let's go
now— not for my father, not for my sister (and yet, they too, perhaps both he and she, had to give up at some point) not for vengeance, not out of hatred—absolutely not out of hatred— not even as punishment (who'd punish, and punish whom?) but perhaps for the fulfillment of appointed time, for time to remain
free, perhaps for some sort of useless victory over our first and ultimate fear, perhaps for some sort of "yes", that shines, ambiguous and
irreproachable, beyond you and me, to give this place, if possible, a breathing space. See how beautifully the
dawn is breaking.
Mornings in the Argplid are a little humid. The urn
is almost frosted, with some condensation
as if, as they say, rosy-fingered dawn had moistened it with her tears,
holding it between her knees. Let's go. The appointed hour
has already come. Why are you smiling? Do you agree?
Was it this that you knew already yet never said?
This is the right ending—isn't it?—after the most righteous of fights?
Let me, one last time, kiss your smile,
while I still have lips. Let's go now. I accept my fate. Let's go.
They walk toward the gate. The guards stand aside as if they were expecting them. The old porter opens the great door, keeping his head bent submissively as if to greet them. In a moment there comes the sound of a man's clotted groan, and then a woman's startled, harrowing cry, followed by a great stillness, broken only, in the plain below, by the occasional report of a hunter's gun, and the countless twitterings of unseen sparrows, finches, skylarks, tomtits, blackbirds. Swallows circle persistently over the north wing of the palace. The guards calmly take off their helmets and wipe the inner cloth band with their sleeves. Then, right under the lion gate, a large cow stops and stares at the morning sky with her huge, black, unwavering eyes.BUCHAREST, ATHENS, SAMOS, MYCENAE, JUNE 1962-JULY I966
Translation by PETER GREEN and BEVERLY BARDSLEY
Anvil press poetry, London 1993 ,
