George Seferis

 

The Companions in Hades

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

fools, who ate the cattle of Helios Hyperion;
but he deprived them of the day of their return.
— Odyssey

Since we still had some hardtack

how stupid of us

to go ashore and eat

the Sun’s slow cattle,

for each was a castle

you’d have to battle

forty years, till you’d become

a hero and a star!

On the earth’s back we hungered,

but when we’d eaten well

we fell to these lower regions

mindless and satisfied.

Constantine Cavafy

  

    photograph by Duane Michaels

The God Abandons Antony

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. 

                                            (translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard)

Yannis Ritsos

 

In the Depths

He saw the diver stir deep down in the water
with soft, carnal movements. Beyond 
he saw the clay penis and the statue's feet  
stepping firmly on the sea floor. And he also saw
the clay woman spread out, waiting,  
one knee slightly raised, with a red,
totally red fish on her belly. Except 
that the seaweed didn't move, there was no seaweed,  
and the coin they threw in from above descended slowly
until it stopped a hand's width from the woman's mouth.  

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990): In the Depths, 1971, from The Wall Inside the Mirror, translated by Edmund Keeley in Yannis Ritsos: Exile and Return, Selected Poems 1967-1974, 1985

Yannis Ritsos

The Time Dimension

Hallway, door, hallway, door; half-light; afternoon leaning toward dusk. All the doors
open to the far end. People made of plaster, bent over,  are sitting alone, each to a bench. The last, 
in the innermost hallway, barely distinguishable  like the head of a pin:
......................................................................................"Distance," he was saying, "neutralizes   

volume, maybe pain as well." That's what he was saying.
Nobody believed him or even paid attention to him. On the right,  through the dust-covered, barred window,
you could see, passing by under artificial noon sunshine,  a tall, immense bus full of people on an excursion,
plaster boys, plaster girls with spearguns,  with those long plastic flippers,
very blue or yellow, hanging in the windows.

(Was the absence of a conclusion, then, the essence?)

                                                                                            translated by Edmund Keeley

Yannis Ritsos (1909-1980): The Time Dimension, 1971, from The Wall Inside the Mirror, 1974, in Exile and Return: Selected Poems 1967-1974, translated by Edmund Keeley, 1985

Constantine Cavafy

The Bandage

Translated from the Greek by Evan Jones

He said that he'd stumbled into a wall or fallen.But likely the cut on his shoulderwas caused by something more serious.He stood up abruptly, reaching for somephotographs on a high shelfthat he wanted to hold. The bandageloosened and the cut opened.I dressed his shoulder again, but was slowin finishing, because it caused him no painand because I liked to look at his blood. That bloodwas the source of my longing for him.When he left, I found at the footof his chair a bloodied cloth, cotton,a cloth that looked ready for the rubbish binand that I took to my lipsand held there for a long time —the blood of longing on my lips.May 1919 (Hidden)