Mythistorema

Selections

                                       by George Seferis

                                   2

Still another well inside a cave.

It used to be easy for us to draw up idols and ornaments

to please those friends who still remained loyal to us.

The ropes have broken; only the grooves on the well's lip

remind us of our past happiness:

the fingers on the rum, as the poet pt it.

The fingers feel the coolness of the stone a little,

then the body's fever prevails over it

and the cave stakes its soul and loses it

every moment, full of silence, without a drop of water.

                               4

                                                                                                Argonauts

And if the soul

is to know itself

it must look

into a soul:

the stranger and enemy, we've seen him in the mirror.

The companions were good men, they never complained

about the work or the thirst or the frost,

they had the bearing of trees and waves

that accept the wind and the rain

accept the night and the sun

without changing in the midst of change.

They were good men, whole days

they sweated at the oars with lowered eyes

breathing in rhythm

and their blood reddened a submissive skin.

Sometimes they sang with lowered eyes

as we were passing the dry island with the Barbary figs

to the west, beyond the cape

of the barking dogs.

If it is to know itself, they said

it must look into a soul, they said

and the oars struck the sea's gold

in the sunset.

We passed many capes many islands the sea

leading to another sea, gulls and seals.

Sometimes unfortunate women wept

lamenting their lost children

and others raging sought Alexander the Great

and glories buried in the depths of Asia.

We moored on shores full of night-scents

with the singing of birds, waters that left on the hands

the memory of 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 companions died in turn,

with lowered eyes. Their oars

mark the place where they sleep on the shore.

No one remembers them. Justice.

                                           12

                                                                                               Bottle in the Sea

Three rocks, a few burnt pines, a solitary chapel

and farther above

the same landscape repeated starts again:

three rocks in the shape of a gate-way, rusted,

a few burnt pines, black and yellow,

and a square hut buried in whitewash;

and still farther above, many times over,

the same landscape recurs level after level

to the horizon, to the twilight sky.

Here we moored the ship to splice the broken oars,

to drink water and to sleep.

The sea that embittered us is deep and unexplored

and unfolds a boundless calm.

Here among the pebbles we found a coin

and threw dice for it.

The youngest won it and disappeared.

We set out again with our broken oars.

 

                                               17.

                                                                                               Astyanax

Now that you are leaving, take the boy with you also,

the boy who saw the light under that plane-tree,

one day when trumpets resounded and weapons shone

and the sweating horses, nostrils wet,

bent to the trough to touch

the green surface of the water.

The olive trees with the wrinkles of our fathers

the rocks with the wisdom of our fathers

and our brother's blood alive on the earth

were a vital joy, a rich pattern

for the souls who knew how to pray.

Now that you are leaving, now that the day of payment

dawns, now that no one knows

whom he will kill and how he will die,

take with you the boy who saw the light

under the leaves of that plane-tree

and teach him to study the trees.  

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