The splintered islands of wild cherry and of seal

                             by Nikos Gatsos

ELEGY (1946)

God will have smiled at the fire in your eyes

Spring will have closed its heart like a pearl

from an ancient shore

Now, luminous in your sleep

in the frozen fields where the grapevines

become embalmed wings marble doves

dumb children of anticipation –

I wished you would come some evening covered in cloud

mist from stone frost from olive

because on your chaste brow

sometimes I would see

the snow of sheep and of lilies

But you passed from life like a tear of the sea

like summer lights and the last rains of May

though once you were one of its geranium waves

one of its sharp pebbles

one of its small swallows in a pathless wood

without dawn bells without lamps at dusk

with your passionate heart turned toward the unknown

to the shattered tusks of another shore

to the splintered islands of wild cherry and of seal

TAKE YOUR RING (1994) *

In memory of Maria Nomikou

God will have smiled at the fire in your eyes

Spring will have closed its heart like a pearl

        from an ancient shore

Now, luminous in your sleep

on the sands of the stars, you are a sharp pebble

in the embrace of Kelaino and Maia

Take your ring

Take the silver of the meadows to tint your face

Come to me to sleep

to sink perpetually into an springtime sea

Some summer night when I turn toward your eyes

lost on the shores of some pale galaxy

come like the sun of April in the window of my dream

with the ribbon round your throat

to greet the cranes that travel toward the unknown

to close up a rose just like doves sing a child to sleep

under the leaves of the grapevines on the banks of the

Aspropotamo

in the embrace of the platan trees by a cave of the Eurotas

Life was for you like a tear of the sea

like a fire in summer and a scarf in May

just so, you were one of its geranium waves

one of its sharp pebbles

one of its small swallows wandering in the woods

without fire for the dawn without stars for spring

with your hot heart turned toward the unknown

to the shattered tusks of another shore

to the dead children of wild cherry and seal  

* Draft for Elegy published after Gatsos' death in 1992.   

Translation, DW, 2006.