MONOGRAMMA-ODYSSEAS ELYTIS

part II - MONOGRAMMA-ODYSSEAS ELYTIS

I have spoken of you in old times
With wet nurses and veteran rebels
From where your beastly sorrow comes
The brilliance of trembling water on your face
And why it must be that I come near you
I who dont want love but want the wind
But want the gallop of the uncovered, upright sea

And none had heard of you
Neither dittany nor wild mushroom
Of Cretan highlands, none
Only God grants and guides your hand to me

Here and there, carefully around the whole turn
Of the faces seashore, the bay, the hair
On the hill rippling off to the left

Your body in the stance of the solitary pine
Eyes of pride and of transparent
Depth, in the house with an old china cabinet
Of yellow lace and cypress wood
Alone I wait for where youll first appear
High on the veranda or under the gardens cobblestones
With the horse of the saint and the egg of Easter

Like from a wrecked wall painting
Big as the little life wanted you,
To hold within a little candle the stentorian volcanic glow

So no one will have seen or heard
Anything about you in the wilderness of dilapidated houses
Neither the buried ancestors at the edge of the garden fence
Nor the old woman with all her herbs

Of you, only I, and maybe the music
That is concealed inside me but shall return more strongly
Of you, the unformed breast of twelve years
Turning toward the future and the red crater
Of you, a bitter odor finds the body
And like a pin punctures memory
And here the soil, here the doves, here our ancient earth.
VI

I have seen much and the earth to my mind seems more beautiful
More beautiful in the golden breath
The sharp stone, more beautiful
The dark blue of the isthmuses and the roofs among the waves
More beautiful, the rays where you pass without stepping
Unbeaten like the goddess of Samothrace atop the seas hills

Like so I have seen you and that will suffice
For all and time will be exonerated
In the wake of your passage
My soul like a green dolphin follows

And plays with the white and azure

Triumph, triumph, where I have been conquered
Before love and together
With the hibiscus and passion-flower
Go, go, and let me be lost

Alone, and let the sun be a newborn that you hold.
Alone, and let me be the homeland that mourns
Let it be the word that I sent to hold the laurel leaf for you
Alone, the lone, strong wind and the full
Pebble under the eyelid of dark depths
The fisherman who caught then threw Paradise back into Time.

VII

In Paradise I have marked out an island
Akin to you and a house by the sea

With a large bed and a small door
I have thrown an echo into the depths
To see myself every morning when I rise

Half to see you passing through the waters
Half to weep for you in Paradise.

Translation by Aliki Caloyeras