A little bit of poetry, goes a long way on Mondays

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:52:18 GMT

Argonauts (excerpt)

Our country is closed in, all mountains
that day and night have the low sky as their roof.
We have no rivers, we have no wells, we have no springs,
only a few cisterns - and these empty - that echo, and that we worship.
A stagnant hollow sound, the same as our loneliness
the same as our love, the same as our bodies.
We find it strange that once we were able to build
our houses, huts and sheepfolds.
And our marriages, the cool coronals and the fingers,
become enigmas inexplicable to our soul.
How were our children born, how did they grow strong?

Our country is closed in. The two black Symplegades
close it in. When we go down
to the harbours on Sunday to breathe freely
we see, lit in the sunset,
the broken planks from voyages that never ended,
bodies that no longer know how to love.

Poem by George Seferis, winner of Nobel Prize for literature 1963.

A strange place to be...George's page: Books

A little bit of poetry, goes a long way on Mondays