POEMS
ODYSSEUS ELYTIS
Fortune Had A Surplus
Fortune had a surplus it seems
And August in midwinter reaches out to touch us
With a very lengthy arm. But we are elsewhere
The first life sets its prow into the tempest though beaten
I lived in long-enduring opposition within which the opulence
Of the Cyclades' goldblue and of Aeolis' breaths
Licking words and other syllables of branchlets I got through
And I went from Estonia to Israel and from Israel
To Columbia. Alone. And as for necessities I was naked
I found sweet rains and nights of black coral
And a free thread of if and of no
So where and in what oracles' negatives is the unknown still being bribed
Whose quail's leap frees and drops silver fish in the night
It's time the idols be depicted both in our sleep and upon us
So the sea's fema les are sti rred up
It is from our imprints that spring will have descendants
No one else comes out safely from the sum of such centuries.
Come So Cynthia
Come so Cynthia
now treaders of the little
underwater reef and anyway it's time for the treefullness to be walled in
and let the wave kiss and let the wind yield good omens.
Because even the rain's mind
is a thought and the very valuable things are of minor gold.
Time of mania and of levantine.
