Know Thyself Nothing in Excess |
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Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:07 am | |
| From my fav. Greek poet, Odysseas Elytis
GIFT SILVER POEM
I know that all this is worthless and that the language I speak doesn't have an alphabet Since the sun and the waves are a syllabic script which can be deciphered only in the years of sorrow and exile And the motherland a fresco with successive overlays frankish or slavic which, should you try to restore, you are immediately sent to prison and held responsible
To a crowd of foreign Powers always through the intervention of your own
As it happens for the disasters But let's imagine that in an old days' threshing-floor which might be in an apartment-complex children are playing and whoever loses
Should, according to the rules, tell the others and give them a truth
Then everyone ends up holding in his hand a small Gift, silver poem.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:07 am | |
| DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF CONSTANTINOS PALAEOLOGOS
by Odysseas Elytis
I
As he stood there erect before the Gate and impregnable in his sorrow
Far from the world where his spirit sought to bring Paradise to his measure And harder even than stone for no one had ever looked on him tenderly - at times his crooked teeth whitened strangely
And as he passed by with his gaze a little beyond mankind and from them all extracted One who smiled on him The Real one Whom death could never seize
He took care to pronounce the word sea clearly that all the dolphins within it might shine And the desolation so great it might contain all of God and every waterdrop ascending steadfastly toward the sun
As a young man he had seen gold glittering and gleaming on the shoulders of the great And one night he remembers during a great storm the neck of the sea roared so it turned murky but he would not submit to it
The world's an oppressive place to live through yet with a little pride it's worth it.
II
Dear God what now Who had to battle with thousands and not only his loneliness Who? He who knew with a single word how to slake the thirst of entire worlds What?
From whom they had taken everything And his sandals with their criss-crossed straps and his pointed trident and the wall he mounted every afternoon like an unruly and pitching boat to hold the reigns against the weather
And a handful of vervain which he had rubbed on a girl's cheek at midnight to kiss her (how the waters of the moon gurled on the stone steps three cliff-lengths above the sea...)
Noon out of night And not one person by his side Only his faithful words that mingled all their colors to leave in his hand a lance of white light
And opposite along the whole wall's length a host of heads poured in plaster as far as his eyes could see
"Noon out of night - all life a radiance!" he shouted and rushed into the horde dragging behind him an endless golden line
And at once he felt the final pallor overmastering him as it hastened from afar.
III
Now as the sun's wheel turned more and more swiftly the courtyards plunged into winter and once again emerged red from the geranium
And the small cool domes like blue medusae reached each time higher to the silverwork the wind so delicately worked as a painting for other times more distant
Virgin maidens their breasts glowing a summer dawn brought him branches of fresh palm leaves and those of the myrtle uprooted from the depths of the sea
Dripping iodine While under his feet he heard the prows of black ships sucked into the great whirlpool the ancient and smoked seacraft from which still erect with riveted gaze the Mothers of God stood rebuking
Horses overturned on dumpheaps a rabble of buildings large and small debris and dust flaming in the air
And there lying prone always with an unbroken word between his teeth Himself the last of the Hellenes!
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:08 am | |
| I brought you up with soil and water a young swallow to be and yet a wild creature, to have you as my alphabet-book in the times and as my unfading nightlight in memory.
But you, looking for the source of dreams near the Virgin Mary, developed wings, refused the land our dark, our first mother.
Nikos Gkatsos, "Dark Mother"
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:08 am | |
| POSEIDONIANS
"The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language after so many centuries of mingling with Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners. The only thing surviving from their ancestors was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites, with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths. And it was their habit toward the festival's end to tell each other about their ancient customs and once again to speak Greek names that only few of them still recognized. And so their festival always had a melancholy ending because they remebered that they too were Greeks, they too once upon a time were citizens of Magna Graecia; and how low they'd fallen now, what they'd become, living and speaking like barbarians, cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life."
C. Cavafy
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:09 am | |
| AS MUCH AS YOU CAN
And if you can't shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it by too much contact with the world, by too much activity and talk.
Try not to degrade it by dragging it along, taking it around and exposing it so often to the daily silliness of social events and parties, until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.
C. Cavafy, 1913
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:10 am | |
| I know the night no longer, the terrible anonymity of death A fleet of stars moors in the haven of my heart O Hesperos, sentinel, that you may shine by the side Of a skyblue breeze on an island which dreams Of me anouncing the dawn from its rocky heights My twin eyes set you sailing embraced With my true heart's star: I know the night no longer I know the names no longer of a world which disavows me I read seashells, leaves, and the stars clearly My hatred is superfluous on the roads of the sky Unless it is the dream which watches me again As I walked by the sea of immortality in tears O Hesperos, under the arc of your golden fire I know the night no longer that is a night only.
Odysseus Elytis
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:11 am | |
| HALASMATA (RUINS) from Still Life by Kostis Palamas
I returned to my golden playgrounds, I returned to my white boyhood trail, I returned to see the wondrous palace, Built just for me by love's divine ways. Blackberry bushes now cover the boyhood trail, And the midday suns have burned the playgrounds, And a tremor has destroyed my palace so rare, And in the midst of fallen walls and burned Timbers, I remain lifeless; lizards and snakes With me now live the sorrows and the hates; And of my palace a broken mass now remains.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:14 am | |
| GOD ABANDONS ANTHONY by K. P. Kavafis
When suddenly at midnight An invisible troupe is heard passing by, With exquisite music, and great voices - Your good luck that just abandoned you, Your failed work, your life's plans that Proved to be illusions, do not uselessly bemoan. Like one prepared for so long, like a brave man, Bid farewell to Alexandria that leaves you. Especially do not be fooled, do not say that It was a dream, that you have not heard right - Such vain hopes do not befit one like you. Like one prepared for so long, like a brave man, You who were equal and deserved such a city, Walk with steady foot to the window, And listen with emotion, but not with Timid entreaties and unseemly grief, As your last pleasure, to the sounds, The great organs from that mystic band, And bid farewell to Alexandria you are losing.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:15 am | |
| SEA OF ALL WATERS (Greek folk song from the Cyclades Islands)
Oh sea that drinks all rivers and waters, and leaves none of our young men around: "Slacken away, let go" ... ah you treacherous sea! Cursed sea, what did I do to you and you hold my man abroad for so long? Oh sea, lying out there for me to gaze at, and knowing my sorrow all too well, please bring back from abroad my love. Oh sea that hits me wave after wave, pity me not for loving you so much. Oh my sky-colored sea and you blue waves, bring back my love, end my sighing. "Slacken away, let go" ... ah you treacherous sea!
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:16 am | |
| An Old Man on the River Bank
And yet we should consider how we go forward. To feel is not enough, nor to think, nor to move nor to put your body in danger in front of an old loophole when scalding oil and molten lead furrow the walls.
And yet we should consider towards what we go forward, not as our pain would have it, and our hungry children and the chasm between us and the companions calling from the opposite shore; nor as the bluish light whispers it in an improvised hospital, the pharmaceutic glimmer on the pillow of the youth operated on at noon; but it should be in some other way, I would say like the long river that emerges from the great lakes enclosed deep in Africa, that was once a god and then became a road and a benefactor, a judge and a delta; that is never the same, as the ancient wise men taught, and yet always remains the same body, the same bed, and the same Sign, the same orientation.
I want nothing more than to speak simply, to be granted that grace. Because we've loaded even our song with so much music that it's slowly sinking and we've decorated our art so much that its features have been eaten away by gold and it's time to say our few words because tomorrow our soul sets sail.
If pain is human we are not human beings merely to suffer pain; that's why I think so much these days about the great river, this meaning that moves forward among herbs and greenery and beasts that graze and drink, men who sow and harvest, great tombs even and small habitations of the dead. This current that goes its way and that is not so different from the blood of men, from the eyes of men when they look straight ahead without fear in their hearts, without the daily tremor for trivialities or even for important things; when they look straight ahead like the traveller who is used to gauging his way by the stars, not like us, the other day, gazing at the enclosed garden of a sleepy Arab house, behind the lattices the cool garden changing shape, growing larger and smaller, we too changing, as we gazed, the shape of our desire and our hearts, at noon's precipitation, we the patient dough of a world that throws us out and kneads us, caught in the embroidered nets of a life that was as it should be and then became dust and sank into the sands leaving behind it only that vague dizzying sway of a tall palm tree
Giorgos Seferis
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:16 am | |
| Nikiforos Vrettakos
That's How Taygetos Stood For Me
Taygeros stood for me as my mother's bosom. It irrigated me blue, testy blood, sun and greenery until my soul is tied as its rock, till in my heart its deep ravines are carved and shape into my life its twelve peaks so I could go up with my sole dream the sun. αnd the sun my only thirst Thirst as deep as the ocean, As high as the moon, such thirst as to sadden God.
...That's how Taygetos backed me up till the two children of God: poetry and love, were born inside me!
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:21 am | |
| Nikiforos Vrettakos
Letter to the Man of my Country
Don't betray me! And above all do not tell him that hope has forsaken me!
As you look up at Taygetos mark the ravines which I crossed, and the peaks that I trod and the stars I saw. Tell them from me, tell them from my tears I still insist that the world is beautiful!
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:22 am | |
| Nikiforos Vrettakos
Investigation
The Ten Commandments
I minister to life's suffering, yet I musn't forget I was also born a high priest of beauty and I'm obliged to celebrate our world, to transform its radiance into the written word. The First and Last commandment of beauty: love.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:22 am | |
| Nikiforos Vrettakos
The view below
My contention is with the guns that have learned to speak and insist on the silence of the poets.
Yet i know full well the thunder contained in my voice will be heard later.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:23 am | |
| Nikiforos Vrettakos
Neither
Neither solitude nor night frightens me. I am content. I want for nothing. I've found the breasts with the milk of the universe.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:23 am | |
| Nikiforos Vrettakos
Faces of flowers
Once again today I stopped and for a long time gazed at the face of a flower. I located its eyes; I bent down inside it and felt awe.
And I was filled iwth love filled with reverence filled with humankind.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:24 am | |
| Erotikos Logos
I
Rose of fate, you looked for ways to wound us yet you bent like the secret about to be released and the command you chose to give us was beautiful and your smile was like a ready sword.
The ascent of your cycle livened creation from your thorn emerged the way's thought our impulse dawned naked to possess you the world was easy: a simple pulsation.
II
The secrets of the sea are forgotten on the shores the darkness of the depths is forgotten in the surf; the corals of memory suddenly shine purple. . . O do not stir. . . listen to hear its light
motion. . . you touched the tree with the apples the hand reached out, the thread points the way and guides you. . . O dark shivering in the roots and the leaves if it were but you who would bring the forgotten dawn!
May lilies blossom again on the meadow of separation may days open mature, the embrace of the heavens, may those eyes alone shine in the glare the pure soul be outlined like the song of a flute.
Was it night that shut its eyes? Ashes remain, as from the string of a bow a choked hum remains, ash and dizziness on the black shore and dense fluttering imprisoned in surmise.
Rose of the wind, you knew but took us unknowing at a time when thought was building bridges so that fingers would knit and two fates pass by and spill into the low and rested light.
III
O dark shivering in the roots and the leaves! Come forth sleepless form in the gathering silence raise your head from your cupped hands so that your will be done and you tell me again
the words that touched and merged with the blood like an embrace; and let your desire, deep like the shade of a walnut tree, bend and flood us with your lavish hair from the down of the kiss to the leaves of the heart.
You lowered your eyes and you had the smile that masters of another time humbly painted. Forgotten reading from an ancient gospel, your words breathed and your voice was gentle:
‘The passing of time is soft and unworldly and pain floats lightly in my soul dawn breaks in the heavens, the dream remains afloat and it's as if scented shrubs were passing.
‘With my eyes' startling, with my body's blush a flock of doves awakens and descends their low, circling flight entangles me the stars are a human touch on my breast.
‘I hear, as in a sea shell, the distant adverse and confused lament of the world but these are moments only, they disappear, and the two-branched thought of my desire reigns alone.
‘It seemed I'd risen naked in a vanished recollection when you came, strange and familiar, my beloved to grant me, bending, the boundless deliverance I was seeking from the wind's quick sistrum. . .'
The broken sunset declined and was gone and it seemed a delusion to ask for the gifts of the sky. You lowered your eyes. The moon's thorn blossomed and you became afraid of the mountain's shadows.
. . . In the mirror how our love diminishes in sleep the dreams, school of oblivion in the depths of time, how the heart contracts and vanishes in the rocking of a foreign embrace. . .
IV
Two serpents, beautiful, apart, tentacles of separation crawl and search, in the night of the trees, for a secret love in hidden bowers; sleepless they search, they neither drink nor eat.
Circling, twisting, their insatiable intent spins, multiplies, turns, spreads rings on the body which the laws of the starry dome silently govern, stirring its hot, irrepressible frenzy.
The forest stands as a shivering pillar for night and the silence is a silver cup where moments fall echoes distinct, whole, a careful chisel sustained by carved lines. . .
The statue suddenly dawns. But the bodies have vanished in the sea in the wind in the sun in the rain. So the beauties nature grants us are born but who knows if a soul hasn't died in the world.
The parted serpents must have circled in fantasy (the forest shimmers with birds, shoots, blossoms) their wavy searching still remains, like the turnings of the cycle that bring sorrow.
V
Where is the double-edged day that had changed everything? Won't there be a navigable river for us? Won't there be a sky to dropp refreshing dew for the soul benumbed and nourished by the lotus?
On the stone of patience we wait for the miracle that opens the heavens and makes all things possible we wait for the angel as in the age-old drama at the moment when the open roses of twilight
disappear. . . Red rose of the wind and of fate, you remained in memory only, a heavy rhythm rose of the night, you passed, undulating purple undulation of the sea. . . The world is simple.
Giorgos Seferis
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:25 am | |
| ‘The nightingales won't let you sleep in Platres.'
Shy nightingale, in the breathing of the leaves, you who bestow the forest's musical coolness on the sundered bodies, on the souls of those who know they will not return. Blind voice, you who grope in the darkness of memory for footsteps and gestures — I wouldn't dare say kisses — and the bitter raving of the frenzied slave-woman.
‘The nightingales won't let you sleep in Platres.'
Platres: where is Platres? And this island: who knows it? I've lived my life hearing names I've never heard before: new countries, new idiocies of men or of the gods; my fate, which wavers between the last sword of some Ajax and another Salamis, brought me here, to this shore. The moon rose from the sea like Aphrodite, covered the Archer's stars, now moves to find the heart of Scorpio, and alters everything. Truth, where's the truth? I too was an archer in the war; my fate: that of a man who missed his target.
Lyric nightingale, on a night like this, by the shore of Proteus, the Spartan slave-girls heard you and began their lament, and among them — who would have believed it? — Helen! She whom we hunted so many years by the banks of the Scamander. She was there, at the desert's lip; I touched her; she spoke to me: ‘It isn't true, it isn't true,' she cried. ‘I didn't board the blue bowed ship. I never went to valiant Troy.'
Breasts girded high, the sun in her hair, and that stature shadows and smiles everywhere, on shoulders, thighs and knees; the skin alive, and her eyes with the large eyelids, she was there, on the banks of a Delta. And at Troy? At Troy, nothing: just a phantom image. That's how the gods wanted it. And Paris, Paris lay with a shadow as though it were a solid being; and for ten whole years we slaughtered ourselves for Helen.
Great suffering had desolated Greece. So many bodies thrown into the jaws of the sea, the jaws of the earth so many souls fed to the millstones like grain. And the rivers swelling, blood in their silt, all for a linen undulation, a filmy cloud, a butterfly's flicker, a wisp of swan's down, an empty tunic — all for a Helen. And my brother? Nightingale nightingale nightingale, what is a god? What is not a god? And what is there in between them?
‘The nightingales won't let you sleep in Platres.'
Tearful bird, on sea-kissed Cyprus consecrated to remind me of my country, I moored alone with this fable, if it's true that it is a fable, if it's true that mortals will not again take up the old deceit of the gods; if it's true that in future years some other Teucer, or some Ajax or Priam or Hecuba, or someone unknown and nameless who nevertheless saw a Scamander overflow with corpses, isn't fated to hear messengers coming to tell him that so much suffering, so much life, went into the abyss all for an empty tunic, all for a Helen.
Giorgos Seferis
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:26 am | |
| In the Manner of G.S.
On Pelion among the chestnut trees the Centaur's shirt slipped through the leaves to fold around my body as I climbed the slope and the sea came after me climbing too like mercury in a thermometer till we found the mountain waters. On Santorini touching islands that were sinking hearing a pipe play somewhere on the pumice stone my hand was nailed to the gunwale by an arrow shot suddenly from the confines of a vanished youth. At Mycenae I raised the great stones and the treasures of the house of Atreus and slept with them at the hotel 'Belle Helene de Menelas'; they disappeared only at dawn when Cassandra crowed, a cock hanging from her black throat. On Spetses, Poros, and Mykonos the barcaroles sickened me.
What do they want, all those who say they're in Athens or Piraeus? Someone comes from Salamis and asks someone else whether he 'originates from Omonia Square? ' 'No, I originate from Syntagma, ' replies the other, pleased; 'I met Yianni and he treated me to an ice cream.' Meanwhile Greece is travelling and we don't know anything, we don't know we're all sailors out of work, we don't know how bitter the port becomes when all the ships have gone; we mock those who do know.
Strange people! they say they're in Attica but they're really nowhere; they buy sugared almonds to get married they carry hair tonic, have their photographs taken the man I saw today sitting against a background of pigeons and flowers let the hands of the old photographer smoothe away the wrinkles left on his face by all the birds in the sky.
Meanwhile Greece goes on travelling, always travelling and if we see 'the Aegean flower with corpses' it will be with those who tried to catch the big ship by swimming after it those who got bored waiting for the ships that cannot move the ELSI, the SAMOTHRAKI, the AMVRAKIKOS. The ships hoot now that dusk falls on Piraeus, hoot and hoot, but no capstan moves, no chain gleams wet in the vanishing light, the captain stands like a stone in white and gold.
Wherever I travel Greece wounds me, curtains of mountains, archipelagos, naked granite. They call the one ship that sails AGONY 937.
Giorgos Seferis
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:26 am | |
| Our mind is a virgin forest of killed friends...
'our mind is a virgin forest of killed friends. And if I talk to you with fairy tales and parables it is because you listen to it more sweetly, and you can't talk of horror because it's alive
because it doesn't speak and moves it drips the day, it drips on sleep like a pain reminding of evils.
To speak of heroes to speak of heroes: Michalis who left with open wounds from hospital may have talked of heroes when, that night he was dragging his foot in the blacked-out city, was screaming feeling our pain 'in the dark we go, in the dark we move...' Heroes move in the dark.
G. Seferis
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:28 am | |
| Ha!
Rodamon and Eve
Ready to commit suicide (as Balthus says) is Humanity;
(but) to listen to Mozart nobody seems willing
[.....]
"| Children and grand-children of Renunciation | are all of them bastards.
(paidiA ki engOnia tis apArnisis EInai Ola tous bAstarda").
Elytis _________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.*
Last edited by Lyssa on Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:29 am; edited 1 time in total |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:28 am | |
| The Primal Paradise -Elytis
I don't know at all, anything about "Primal Sins", and other Western inventions.
Nevertheless, so far away, so long ago, back in the frost of our first days, even before the time of our Mother's Hut it felt so nice, at the time!
The white garments of the angels I remember closed-up in front but left unbuttoned exactly like those girls in uniforms, girls working at the hairdressers. -a miracle! and all the geraniums in a long pavement, all-white in the lime turned to the wind, you could see them grinding ceaselessly the white pith of the Sun...
Sitting cross-legged in the beach where the wind shivered full of golden spark from the sneezers I could see them galloping girls of the South-East Wind girls with cool buttocks...
The angels were teasing me, gathered around me, asking: "What is Pain?" and "What is sickness?" and I didn't know at all. I didn't know, I hadn't even heard of 'the Tree' through which death came into the world.
Well? Death, was it true? Not this death, but the other one -which will come with the first tear of the newly-born? Was Injustice true? Was the rage of the nations true? Was the Work-toil real, all day and all-night-long, too?
And the Archangels, all of them, Michael, Gabriel, Ouriel, Rafael, Gaboudelon, Akir, Arphoughiton, Belouchos, Zabouleon, were laughing, shaking their golden heads like corn-plants in the wind
knowing that the only death, the only one was the death manufactured by the minds of men and their biggest Lie, the Tree, never (even) existed !
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 37196 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:29 am | |
| Vrettakos is my favorite. _________________ γνῶθι σεαυτόν μηδέν άγαν
|
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:30 am | |
| Nice to know. _________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Wed Feb 20, 2013 7:30 am | |
| | Maria Nephele lives in the antipodes of Morality | she is full of Ethos. | When she says 'I will sleep with so-and-so' | she means the will murder History once more... (i MarIa nefEli zei stous antIpodes tis eethikEEs EInai Olo EEthos. Otan lEei 'tha koimoithO m'aftOn, ennoEI oti tha skotOsei akOmi mia forA tin istorIa...)
Elytis
[NOTE: Instead of the Christian/monogamous 'ideals', the nature of Maria Nephele is "polyamorous", like the Goddess Aphroditee (Venus) who had countless lovers. However, her polyamorous nature is not 'greedy hedonism', but profoundly revolutionary and capable of changing History. Her erotic ecstasy 'murders History', i.e. changes the 'established order' of the World.]
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Fri Feb 22, 2013 1:47 pm | |
| Lyrics from the music artist Rembetika. Poignant, human, all-too-human poems.
Zembekiko
With planes and ships and with old friends. We wander in the dark but you don’t hear us. You don’t hear us when we sing with electric voices, in the underground arcades. Until our orbits meet Our basic principles.
Our father, the sea breeze, (Oh Batis could be his nickname too) Who came from Smyrni in 1922 And he lived for 50 years , In a secret basement. In this world those who love eat dirty bread, My father Batis said one Sunday. And their passion followed an underground route.
Last night I saw a friend wandering around like an elf, On his motorbike and dogs were chasing him. Rise up my soul, give me electricity. Set your clothes on fire, Set your instruments on fire, To blow up like a black spirit, Our great voice.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Fri Feb 22, 2013 1:47 pm | |
| Your Eyelashes Shine'
Your lashes shine, Like the flowers in a valley, Like the flowers in a valley, Your lashes shine.
You drift your lashes away, And you refuse to care about my thoughts. You drift your lashes away, And you refuse to care about my thoughts.
Your eyes, my sister, broke my heart. Your eyes, my sister, broke my heart.
Your eyes are never going to find eyes like mine. Your eyes are never going to find eyes like mine.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Fri Feb 22, 2013 1:48 pm | |
| Divorce'.
I granted you a divorce, what more do you want from me. Now you go around telling people, What you have against me. Now you go around telling people, What you have against me.
You know, I married you in St. Dionysos And I turned you into a housewife, And I turned you into a housewife, And now nobody talks to you.
I should have kept you on your toes, I should have set your heart on fire. Take your divorce and go do your thing Take your divorce and go do your thing.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Fri Feb 22, 2013 1:48 pm | |
| In this Bad World'.
In this bad world, I’m not hoping for anything good. In this bad world, I’m not hoping for anything good.
Your friends and relatives All want to take advantage of you. In a gulp of water, when they find you, They want to drown you.
Your friends and relatives All want to take advantage of you. In a gulp of water, when they see you, They want to drown you.
And those whom you’ve helped When they suffered, If they see you in a difficult moment They pretend they don’t know you.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
| | | Lyssa Har Har Harr
Gender : Posts : 8965 Join date : 2012-03-01 Location : The Cockpit
| Subject: Re: Greek Poems Fri Feb 22, 2013 1:48 pm | |
| 'Leave Me, Leave Me'.
You don’t want to marry me, You’re afraid of being poor, But I have a dowry which is honor, Which is worth more.
Let me, let me forget you, Let me , let me live alone.
You want to marry a rich girl Who owns houses and has money, You put me aside because I sleep in a shack.
Look how money fixes you in our days. Make me go away, And go embrace your wealth.
_________________ "ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν." [Heraclitus] "All that exists is just and unjust and equally justified in both." [Aeschylus, Prometheus] "The history of everyday is constituted by our habits. ... How have you lived today?" [N.] *Become clean, my friends.* |
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