Voices out of stone out of sleep

by George Seferis

GYMNOPAIDIA

Santorini is geologically composed of pumice stone and china clay; in her bay, islands have appeared and disappeared. this island was once the center of a very ancient religion. the lyrical dances, with a strict and heavy rhythm, performed here were called: Gymnopaidia.

GUIDE TO GREECE

I. SANTORINI

Stoop if you can to the dark sea forgetting

the sound of a flute on naked feet

that trod on your sleep in the other, the sunken life.

Write if you can on your last shell

the day the name the place

and fling it into the sea so it sinks.

We found ourselves naked on the pumice stones

watching the rising islands

watching the red islands sink

into their sleep, into our sleep.

Here we found ourselves naked holding

the scales that tipped toward

injustice.

Instep of power unshadowed will considered love

projects that ripen in the midday sun,

course of fate with the slap of a young hand

on the shoulder;

in the land that was scattered, that can't resist,

in the land that was once our land

the islands -- rust and ash -- are sinking.

Altars destroyed

and friends forgotten

leaves of the palm tree in mud.

Let your hands go traveling if you can

here on time's curve with the ship that touched the horizon.

When the dice struck the flagstone

when the lance struck the breast-plate

when the eye recognized the stranger

and love dried

in punctured souls;

when looking around you see

feet harvested everywhere

dead hands everywhere

darkened eyes everywhere;

when it is no longer left for you to choose

the death you wanted as your own

hearing a cry

even the wolf's cry,

your due;

let your hands go traveling if you can

free yourself from unfaithful time

and sink,

sinks whoever raises the great stones.

II. MYCENAE

Give me your hands, give me your hands, give me your hands

I have seen in the night

the sharp peak of the mountain

seen the plain beyond flooded

with the light of an invisible moon,

seen, turning my head,

black stones huddled

and my life taut as a chord

beginning and end

the final moment:

my hands.

Sinks whoever raises the great stones;

I've raised these stones as long as I was able

I've loved these stones as long as I was able

these stones, my fate.

Wounded by my own soil

tortured by my own shirt

condemned by my own gods,

these stones.

I know that they don't know, but I

who've followed so many times

the path from killer to victim

from victim to punishment

from punishment to the next murder,

groping

the inexhaustible purple

that night of the return

when the Furies began whistling

in the meager grass --

I've seen snakes crossed with vipers

knotted over the evil generation

our fate.

Voices out of stone out of sleep

deeper here where the world darkens

memory of toil rooted in the rhythm

beaten on the earth with feet

forgotten.

Bodies sunk into the foundations

of another time, naked. Eyes

fixed fixed on a point

that you can't make out much as you want to:

the soul

that struggles to become your own soul.

Not even the silence is now yours

here where the millstones have stopped turning.

                                                                              October 1935

From George Seferis, Collected Poems, 1924-1955.  (1967) Trans. Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard.  

DW amendments.