Nikos Engonopoulos | Voices

-

 


Nikos Engonopoulos, 'Orpheus' (1957)
 

to André Breton

through the closed shutters

in the yellow
blaze
of the afternoon
– when the statues keep silent
and the myths concur –
the voices
quiver
first
feebly
slowly
and then
thunderously
and fast
in the alley
 
and suddenly they reveal the age-old secrets
 
at times
– of course –
they are terrible and dreadful
like graves
and then
at times
affectionate
like graves again
and like the caress
of long
thin
fingers
 
and they call
each thing
by its name
 
they call water
from the tap
a mouth
the tall
black
trees
they call
oblivion
the night
in the gullies
Omphali
 
they call the weeping trees
a woman-friend
the cool carmine lips
they name leaves
the amorous teeth
a demon dream
 
the crimson beds of love
they call abyss
the black harbour waters
an oil lamp
and they call
the rusty moorings
of dream
a lament
 
they lay colourful plumes
upon Orpheus'
melancholy gaze
in Orpheus'
hands
they lay fans
they tear apart
his blazing
garments
they adorn
his head
with ribbons of lace
m o s t  f i n e
 
(into Orpheus'
Crown
they thrust
flags)
 
they hurl
blood
amid the mystifying oracles
and they rename
the palm trees
brands
they halt tearfully
over the word mallet
the word portal
they named silence
they called death
music
in the temples
and a forest
in the night
is what they call
my heart
 
 
(My translation ~ 2001)
 


Notes

You can read the Greek text, under the title «Οι φωνές», here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nikos Engonopoulos | The Clavicords of Silence

-
Image
Nikos Engonopoulos, 'Composition' (1960)     ... and everything remains silent, and silence is good only if it holds joy within. Otherwise I fear it ...                         LEE     the seeds of werewolves strain the rudders of the horizon they thrust illuminated flutes amid the blood-stained dresses hanging from the leafy branches of trees they drown crows in the mirrors they seek the justice and mercy of children   but I lay red flowers in her hair I rise all naked in crimson gardens I lose myself inside dark caves whose depths shroud sewing-machines and yellow fish that talk like flowers   and perhaps I am that werewolf of lightning the one they call – when darkness falls – the “man as parenthesis” in the bellows of snares in the shrouds of the pathway at some nightly hour when a bird dies away like a sulphur candle   and so down the temples of the despairing clavichords – drop by drop – they fall, the coup
Read more

Zoe Karelli | Journey of the Magi

-
Image
    Russian icon, 'The Three Magi' (19th c)   Poet, playwright and literary translator – Zoe Karelli was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1901. She is regarded as a pioneer feminist in her country, helping to introduce many women poets into the Greek canon. Her work is mainly concerned with the inner life and existential questions, but it can often be read in reaction to the horrors of World War II, the Occupation and the Greek Civil War that followed between the Greek Communist Party and the British-backed forces of the Greek government. Her poem ‘Journey of the Magi’, written in 1955, re-imagines the story from the point of view of one of the magi. In terms of style and mood, it echoes T.S. Eliot’s poem of the same title, written in 1927, and it is possible that Karelli was aware of it or had even read it. She certainly knew of Eliot’s work and had translated into Greek his plays The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party .   Karelli's poem is not a celebration of j
Read more

Giorgos Seferis | Mythic History (Part II)

-
Image
    Lorenzo Costa, 'The Argonauts Leaving Colchis' (ca. 1480)   "The greatest mistake of my life”, wrote Giorgos Seferis in 1931, “was that I was born a man of the sea and became a man of the land. It is a characteristic of the seaman not to be content anywhere.” The poetic journey dominates Seferis’s poetry. A modern Odysseus, the poet endlessly voyages across many embittering seas, moving from the present back to a mythic time and land in search for a paradisal state of spiritual fulfilment and also, as Seferis notes, in an attempt to “shape and render meaning” to the futility and anarchy of modern history [1]. But the repetitiveness of the journey frustrates the effort and it even effaces the poet himself. What remain are the journey and its perpetual re-enactment with every reading of the poem. Mythic History            XXI We who set out on this pilgrimage glanced at the broken statues absent-mindedly we muttered that life does not fade so easily that death h
Read more