Odysseas Elytis

A Selection of Poems

I LIVED THE BELOVED NAME... I lived the beloved name In the shade of the aged olive tree In the roaring of the lifelong sea Those who stoned me live no longer With their stones I built a fountain To its brink green girls come Their lips descend from the dawn Their hair unwinds far into the future Swallows come, infants of the wind They drink, they fly, so that life goes on The threat of the dream becomes a dream Pain rounds the good cape No voice is lost in the breast of the sky O deathless sea, tell what you are whispering I reach your morning mouth early

On the peak where your love appears I see the will of the night spilling stars The will of the day nipping the earths shoots I saw a thousand wild lilies on the meadows of life A thousand children in the true wind Beautiful strong children who breathe out kindness And know how to gaze at the deep horizons When music raises the islands I carved the beloved name In the shade of the aged olive tree In the roaring of the lifelong sea.

Translation: Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard From: Sun the first

LA PALLIDA MORTE Odourless yet like blossom Death is grasped through the Nostrils. Square silent buildings with Endless corridors come between but the odour Persistently passes folds in white sheets or crimson Curtains throughout the rooms length Sometimes a sudden reflection of light Then once again only the trolleys wheels And the old lithograph with the scene Of the Annunciation as it appears in the mirror Whereupon, with arm outstretched He Who announces and is silent, brings and takes away Pale and with an air of guilt (as if not wanting but having to) Takes and extinguishes one by one the red Globules inside me. As does the verger with the candles when At the end of the long list of prayers For a fair wind and all of creation or Above all, for such things as each has in mind The congregation disperses O Such things have I! Yet how In what way may the unutterable be revealed For while with irises and anemones the Maymonths effuse And with verdant slopes step down to the sea When this too in whispers ever discloses Something of its ancient secrets, men is left speechless The soul alone. This Like the mother of fledglings in danger takes under its wing And patiently gathers from out of the storms A few crumbs of peace; so tomorrow, the next day All that you have in mind with new shiny down May open out in the skies even if the gates to the heavenly dwellings Open and close without justice The Angel knows. And furtively withdraws his finger

So that gold becomes blue again and a fragrance Of burning incense ascends to the rosecoloured dome The candles in every stand light up all at once Then they all follow. Footsteps on the wet leaves Since men too like graves and with reverence pile lovely flowers there Yet, death, not one of them has anything to say Except the poet. The suns Jesus. The same one who after each Saturday Rises. He who Is, Was and Will Be.

Translation: David Connoly From: The oxopetra elegies Published: Harwood Acedemic Publishers, Amsterdam, 1996

MARINA OF THE ROCKS You have a taste of tempest on your lipsBut where did you wander All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea? An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills Stripped your longing to the bone And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera Spotting memory with foam! Where is the familiar slope of short September On the red earth where you played, looking down At the broad rows of the other girls The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary. But where did you wander All night long in the hard reverie of stone and sea? I told you to count in the naked water its luminous days On your back to rejoice in the dawn of things Or again to wander on yellow plains With a clover of light on you breast, iambic heroine. You have a taste of tempest on your lips And a dress red as blood Deep in the gold of summer And the perfume of hyacinthsBut where did you wander Descending toward the shores, the pebbled bays? There was cold salty seaweed there But deeper a human feeling that bled And you opened your arms in astonishment naming it Climbing lightly to the clearness of the depths Where your own starfish shone. Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged And time is a passionate sculptor of men And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope And you, closer to it, embrace a love With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips. It is not for you, blue to the bone, to think of another summer, 6

For the rivers to change their bed And take you back to their mother For you to kiss other cherry trees Or ride on the northwest wind. Propped on the rocks, without yesterday or tomorrow, Facing the dangers of the rocks with a hurricane hairstyle You will say farewell to the riddle that is yours.

Translation: Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard From: Orientations

THE AUTOPSY And so they found that the gold of the olive root had dripped in the recesses of his heart. And from the many times that he had lain awake by candlelight waiting for the dawn, a strange heat had seized his entrails. A little below the skin, the blue line of the horizon sharply painted. And ample traces of blue throughout his blood. The cries of birds which he had come to memorize in hours of great lonely ness apparently spilled out all at once, so that it was impossible for the knife to enter deeply. Probably the intention sufficed for the evil Which he metit is obviousin the terrifying posture of the innocent. His eyes open, proud, the whole forest moving still on the unblemished retina. Nothing in the brain but a dead echo of the sky. Only in the hollow of his left ear some light fine sand, as though in a shell. Which means that often he had walked by the sea alone with the pain of love and the roar of the wind. As for those particles of fire on his groin, they show that he moved time hours ahead whenever he embraced a woman. We shall have early fruit this year.

Translation: Edmund Keeley and Philip

THE SLEEP OF THE BRAVE They will smell of incense, and their faces are burnt by their crossing through the Great Dark Places. There where they were suddenly flung by the Immovable Face-down, on ground whose smallest anemone would suffice to turn the air of Hades bitter (One arm outstretched, as though straining to be grasped by the future, the other arm under the desolate head, turned on its side, As though to see for the last time, in the eyes of a disembowelled horse, the heap of smoking ruins) There time released them. One wing, the redder of the two, covered the world, while the other, delicate, already moved through space, No wrinkle or pang of conscience, but at a great depth The old immemorial blood that began painfully to etch, in the skys blackness, A new sun, not yet ripe, That couldnt manage to dislodge the hoarfrost of lambs from live clover, but, before even casting a ray, could divine the oracles of Erebus... And from the beginning, Valleys, Mountains, Trees, Rivers, A creation made of vindicated feelings now shone, identical and reversed, there for them to cross now, with the Executioner inside them put to death, Villagers of the limitless blue: Neither twelve oclock striking in the depths nor the voice of the pole falling from the heights retracted their footsteps. 10

They read the world greedily with eyes now open forever, there where they were suddenly flung by the Immovable, Face-down, and where the voltures fell upon them violently to enjoy the clay of their guts and their blood.

Translation: Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard From: Six and one pangs of consience for the sky

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THEY CAME dressed up as friends, came countless times, my enemies, trampling the primeval soil. And the soil never blended with their heel. They brought The Wise One, the Founder, and the Geometer, Bibles of letters and numbers, every kind of Submission and Power, to sway over the primeval light. And the light never blended with their roof. Not even a bee was fooled into beginning the golden game, not even a Zephyr into swelling the white aprons. On the peaks, in the valleys, in the ports they raised and founded mighty towers and villas, floating timbers and other vessels; and the Laws decreeing the pursuit of profit they applied to the primeval measure. And the measure never blended with their thinking. Not even a footprint of a god left a man on their soul, not even a fairys glance tried to rob them of their speech. They came dressed up as friends, came countless times, my enemies, bearing the primeval gifts. And their gifts were nothing else but iron and fire only. To the open expecting fingers only weapons and iron and fire. Only weapons and iron and fire.

Translation: Edmund Keeley and George Savidis From: The Axion Esti

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"THIS WIND THAT LOITERS..."

This wind that loiters among the quinces This insect that sucks the vines This stone that the scorpion wears next to his skin And these sheaves on the threshing floor That play the giant to small barefoot children. The images of the Resurrection On walls that the pine trees scratched with their fingers This whitewash that carries the noonday on its back And the cicadas, the cicadas in the ears of the trees. Great summer of chalk Great summer of cork The red sails slanting in gusts of wind On the sea-floor white creatures, sponges Accordions of the rocks Perch from the fingers even of bad fishermen Proud reefs on the fishing lines of the sun. No one will tell our fate, and that is that, We ourselves will tell the suns fate, and that is that.

Translation: Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard From: Sun the first

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WEDNESDAY, 8c IF ONLY MOTHER you could see me: as I was born, I departed. I was far too little - besides who understands? - and far too many were the creeping monsters with the lateral, slimy legs. So, from the length of a life constructed with such difficulty all that remains is a half-ruined door and a lot of large decaying water anemones. Therefrom I pass and proceed - who knows? - to a womb sweeter than my country.

Translation: David Connoly From: Journal of an unseen april Published: Ypsilon publishers,Athens, 1998

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DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF CONSTANTINOS PALAEOLOGOS

As he stood there erect before the Gate and impregnable in his sorrow Far from the world where his spirit sought to bring Paradise to his measure And harder even than stone for no one had ever looked on him tenderly - at times his crooked teeth whitened strangely And as he passed by with his gaze a little beyond mankind and from them all extracted One who smiled on him The Real one Whom death could never seize He took care to pronounce the word sea clearly that all the dolphins within it might shine And the desolation so great it might contain all of God and every waterdrop ascending steadfastly toward the sun As a young man he had seen gold glittering and gleaming on the shoulders of the great And one night he remembers during a great storm the neck of the sea roared so it turned murky
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but he would not submit to it The world's an oppressive place to live through yet with a little pride it's worth it. II Dear God what now Who had to battle with thousands and not only his loneliness Who? He who knew with a single word how to slake the thirst of entire worlds What? From whom they had taken everything And his sandals with their criss-crossed straps and his pointed trident and the wall he mounted every afternoon like an unruly and pitching boat to hold the reigns against the weather And a handful of vervain which he had rubbed on a girl's cheek at midnight to kiss her (how the waters of the moon gurled on the stone steps three cliff-lengths above the sea...) Noon out of night And not one person by his side Only his faithful words that mingled all their colors to leave in his hand a lance of white light And opposite

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along the whole wall's length a host of heads poured in plaster as far as his eyes could see "Noon out of night - all life a radiance!" he shouted and rushed into the horde dragging behind him an endless golden line And at once he felt the final pallor overmastering him as it hastened from afar. III Now as the sun's wheel turned more and more swiftly the courtyards plunged into winter and once again emerged red from the geranium And the small cool domes like blue medusae reached each time higher to the silverwork the wind so delicately worked as a painting for other times more distant Virgin maidens their breasts glowing a summer dawn brought him branches of fresh palm leaves and those of the myrtle uprooted from the depths of the sea Dripping iodine While under his feet he heard the prows of black ships sucked into the great whirlpool the ancient and smoked seacraft

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from which still erect with riveted gaze the Mothers of God stood rebuking Horses overturned on dumpheaps a rabble of buildings large and small debris and dust flaming in the air And there lying prone always with an unbroken word between his teeth Himself the last of the Hellenes!

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GIFT SILVER POEM

I know that all this is worthless and that the language I speak doesn't have an alphabet Since the sun and the waves are a syllabic script which can be deciphered only in the years of sorrow and exile And the motherland a fresco with successive overlays frankish or slavic which, should you try to restore, you are immediately sent to prison and held responsible To a crowd of foreign Powers always through the intervention of your own As it happens for the disasters But let's imagine that in an old days' threshing-floor which might be in an apartment-complex children are playing and whoever loses Should, according to the rules, tell the others and give them a truth Then everyone ends up holding in his hand a small Gift, silver poem.

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"Calendar of an Invisible April" "The Tree of Light and The Fourteenth Beauty"
Translation from Greek: Marios Dikaiakos

"The wind was wistling continuously, it was getting darker, and that distant voice was incessantly reaching my ears : "an entire life"... "an entire life"... On the opposite wall, the shadows of the trees were playing cinema" ----------------

"It seems that somewhere people are celebrating; although there are no houses or human beings I can listen to guitars and other laughters which are not nearby Maybe far away, within the ashes of heavens Andromeda, the Bear, or the Virgin... I wonder; is loneliness the same, all over the worlds ? " ----------------

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"Almond-shaped, elongated eyes, lips; perfumes stemming from a premature sky of great feminine delicacy and fatal drunkeness. I leant on my side -almost fell- onto the hymns to the Virgin and the cold of spacious gardens. Prepared for the worst."

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"FRIDAY, 10c
LATE MIDNIGHT my room is moving in the neighborhood shining like an emerald. Someone searches it, but truth eludes him constantly. How to imagine that it is placed lower Much lower That death too, has its own Red sea."

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Adolescence of Day
Adolescence of day first lily of joy The ancient myrtle flutters its flag The breast of skylarks shall open to the light And a song shall hover in mid-air Sowing the golden barley of fire To the five winds Setting free a terrestial beaty
Translated by Kimon Friar.

I know the night no longer

I know the night no longer, the terrible anonymity of death A fleet of stars moors in the haven of my heart O Hesperos, sentinel, that you may shine by the side Of a skyblue breeze on an island which dreams Of me anouncing the dawn from its rocky heights My twin eyes set you sailing embraced With my true heart's star: I know the night no longer I know the names no longer of a world which disavows me I read seashells, leaves, and the stars clearly My hatred is superfluous on the roads of the sky Unless it is the dream which watches me again As I walked by the sea of immortality in tears O Hesperos, under the arc of your golden fire

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I know the night no longer that is a night only.

ODYSSEUS ELYTIS. Translated by Kimon Friar.

Odysseus Elytis on his poetry November 12, 2002 It has been said that I am a Dionysian poet, particularly in my first poems. I do not think this is correct. I am for clarity. As I wrote in one of my poems, I have sold myself for clearness. I told you that I am critical of occidental rationalism, skeptical of its classicism, and that I feel the breach opened by surrealism was a real liberation of the senses and the imagination. Could one possibly conceive of a new classicism in the spirit of surrealism? Is this a contradiction in terms? Do you know the work of Hans Arp? There you have great simplicity! He is a classical sculptor, isnt he? Yet he was a surrealist! In other words, the world of surrealism had its classicists and romanticists. Essentially, it was romantic movement. But luard, for example, I personally find more classical than romantic. I never was a disciple of the surrealist school. I found certain congenial elements there, as I have told you, which I adapted to the Greek light. There is another passage in my Open Book where I say that Europeans and Westerners always find mystery in obscurity, in the night, while we Greeks find it in light, which is for us an absolute. To illustrate this I give three images. I tell how once, at high noon, I saw a lizard climb upon a stone (it was unafraid since I stood stock-still, ceasing even to breathe) and then, in broad daylight, commence a veritable dance, with a multitude of tiny movements, in honor of light. There and then I deeply sensed the mystery of light. At another time I experienced this mystery while at sea between the islands of Naxos and Paros. Suddenly in the distance I saw dolphins that
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approached and passed us, leaping above the water to the height of our deck. The final image is that of a young woman on whose naked breast a butterfly descended one day at noon while cicadas filled the air with their noise. This was for me another revelation of the mystery of light. It is a mystery which I think we Greeks can fully grasp and present. It may be something unique to this place. Perhaps it can be best understood here, and poetry can reveal it to the entire world. The mystery of light. When I speak of solar metaphysics, thats exactly what I mean. I am not for the clarity of the intelligence, that which the French call la belle clart. No, I think that even the most irrational thing can be limpid. Limpidity is probably the one element which dominates my poetry at present. The critic Varonitis has perceived this. He says that in my book The Light Tree there is an astonishing limpidity. What I mean by limpidity is that behind a given thing something different can be seen and behind that still something else, and so on and so on. This kind of transparency is what I have attempted to achieve. Is seems to me something essentially Greek. The limpidity which exists in nature from the physical point of view is transposed into poetry. However, as I told you, that which is limpid can at the same time be altogether irrational. My kind of clarity is not that of the ratio or of the intelligence, not clart as the French and Westerners in general conceive it. You always look somewhat puzzled, I notice, whenever I contrast Greeks with Westerners or Europeans. This is not a mistake on my part. We Greeks belong politically, of course, to the Occident. We are part of Europe, part of the Western world, but at the same time Greece was never only that. There was always the oriental side which occupied an important place in the Greek spirit. Throughout antiquity oriental values were assimilated. There exists an oriental side in the Greek which should not be neglected. It is for this reason that I make the distinction.

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Let me conclude by reading to you a concise statement I have prepared concerning the aims of my poetry: I consider poetry a source of innocence full of revolutionary forces. It is my mission to direct these forces against a world my conscience cannot accept, precisely so as to bring that world through continual metamorphoses more in harmony with my dreams. I am referring here to a contemporary kind of magic whose mechanism leads to the discovery of our true reality. It is for this reason that I believe, to the point of idealism, that I am moving in a direction which has never been attempted until now. In the hope of obtaining a freedom from all constraints and the justice which could be identified with absolute light, I am an idolater who, without wanting to do so, arrives at Christian sainthood. Athens, 27 March 1972

Odysseus Elytis (Translated by Ivar and Astrid Ivask)

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