Yannis Ritsos
Spring symphony


We will sit down for a bit on the stone bench
            on that elevation 
and as the spring breeze blows on us
we can even imagine that we will fly,
because, quite often, and even now, I can hear the noise
           of my dress
like the noise of two powerful wings flapping open and shut,
and when you lock yourself within this sound of the flight 
you feel your neck tightened, your sides, your flesh,
and so, squeezed inside the muscles of the sky blue-air,
within the robust nerves of the elevation,
it does not matter whether you go or whether you return 
nor does it matter that my hair has grown white,
( this is not my sorrow - my sorrow 
is that my heart does not also grow white).
Let me come along with you. 




I know that ever human being journeys alone toward love,
alone toward glory and alone toward death.
I know it. I have tried it. It is useless. 
Let me come along with you.


This house has become haunted, it drives me away-
I mean to say that it is very old, the nails are loosening,
the picture frames fall as if  they are plunging into the void.
the pieces of plaster fall noiselessly
as the hat of the dead man falls of  the clothes hanger 
           in the dreary hallway
as the frayed woolen glove of silence falls from her lap 
or as a ribbon of moonlight falls on the old 
         disemboweled armchair.