To the Unknown Poet

Righas Pheraios, I call on you, you!

From Australia to Canada

and from Germany to Tashkent

in prisons, in the mountains and islands

the Greeks are scattered.

 

Dionysios Solomos, I call on you, you!

Jailed and jailors

beaten and beaters

commanded and commanders

terrorizers and terrorized

occupiers and occupied

divided in two, the Greeks.

 

Andreas Kalvos, I call on you, you!

Brilliant, the sun marvels,

the mountains and the firs

the shores and the nightingales marvel.

Cradle of beauty and measure, my homeland

is now a place of death.

 

Kostas Palamas, I call on you, you!

Never was so much light turned to darkness,

so much bravery to fear,

strength to weakness,

so many heroes turned to marble busts.

Birthplace of Digenis and Diakos , my fatherland

now a land of slavery.

 

Nikos Kazantzakis, I cry out to you!

But if mortals who still speak

Androutsos’ tongue forget

then memory lives behind iron bars and sentry posts

memory lives in the stones

it nests in the yellow leaves

that cover your body, Greece.

 

Angelos Sikelianos, I call on you, you!

You are the soul of my homeland

polymorphic river

blind with blood

deaf with moans

incapacitated by hatred

and the great love

that jointly rules your soul.

 

The soul of my country is two handcuffs

squeezed into two rivers

two mountains bound with ropes

on the terrace bench. 

The Argive plain swollen from whipping

and Olympus hanging from the mast of the aircraft carrier

hands tied behind its back

until it confesses.

The soul of my homeland is this very seed

that spread roots on the rock.

You are mother, wife, daughter

looking out over the sea and the mountains

and secretly dyeing, with your blood

the red eggs of the Resurrection

fertilized by the times and by men.

 

If only the Easter of the Greeks

would come to my unhappy land!

 

Unknown poet, I call on you, you!

 

 

Arcadia VI