a Greek poet

[Guest guest]

Because I deeply praised and trusted earth

and did not spread my secret wings in flight

but rooted in the stillness all my mind,

the spring has risen to my thirst,

the dancing spring of life, my own joy's spring.

 

Because I never questioned how and when

but plunged my thought into each passing hour

as though its boundless goal lay hidden there,

no matter if I live in calm or storm,

the rounded moment shimmers in my mind,

the fruit falls from the sky, falls deep inside me.

 

Because I did not say: "here life starts, here ends,"

but "days of rain bring on a richer light

and earthquakes give the world a firmer base,

for secret is earth's live creative pulse,"

all fleeting things dissolve away like clouds,

great Death itself has now become my kin.

 

--Angelos Sikelianos, trans. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, from

their collection "Voices of Modern Greece"

 

L*L*L

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