POEMS
Odysseus Elytis
(1911- 1996)
Towards Troy
Strong Kissavos blows and the land fills with comeliness
The hills exchange places with one another but the sea's
Powerful one leaves an unspun cloudlet on Myrina's heights
For the travellers to learn whose fate is engraved in gold
And whose in brass. Because the two are not two
It
is the one of how many and it is the which one of the other
Peaks seek pure snow and the Centaur seeks
A stream that lost its way
The mind can hold a whole life of minds
and a still unthrown thunderbolt
Is it because the southwind planted its storms elsewhere?
Or because the plains took the wave of floating wheat?
Dejected as always Thessalians got hungry for an island. From there
They set off for the area of Troy; the aims of the water's horsemen
succeeded
The first olive tree plighted troth to the second and the fields lit up as at
Easter
Gentle downslopes and then heights of waters again
Stonebuilt children of churches who still continue the game
At a little comer forgetting some small invisible monastery
Genoese women put the child to the breast. And Ulema
Proceed in white Turkish trousers
And with heavy red-on-skyblue collars
Years which seem endless
Even if you were born yesterday
The less the master lasts the more the slave lasts
Yet ambrosial water flows from one kylix to another
And from a light like a lonely little monk in the sky
A wide dome opens for the vineyard to fit
Its star-cluster in. So the seers once were right:
