are we cautious whom the forests
had refused comfort?
Stones on the hillside
bruised our feet
And the well had been empty.
Why are we shy of your pillow
your twin black eyes?
The thunder came nearer
it made a road in our ears
Rain fell yet we lingered
at the cave’s door
Waiting for familiar torrents
expecting an ordinary storm blast
As a nephew might stop
at our house his shoulders loaded
With town purchases
vegetables and dress stuffs
This nephew who was often troublesome
who was stealthy at equinox
Yet of our sister’s blood
all the same.
You, are you Cerberus, four-footed
who halts us this night
While lightning
pitches straw about
And trees glitter strangely?
We, four men lost
on a starless mountain
In the middle of the year,
Your question: “Will you enter?”
What does it mean?
“Who will accept our offering at this end of autumn?”
to Seferis
That shock of hair in the white morning
We were up early while the grain was heaviest
and the earth was taking leaves to its stairwell
We, our arms in the heat, felt a chill
while the sun turned over, went around our shoulder
It was a cold glare; honey in the jars
clasped and unclasped the shell.
You of the thick twist, like an earring
your hair, pendulous and coarsely welded,
As if walking toward the gate one had stopped
and picked up this object, shouted “archaic”
To the tombsman who had accompanied the discoveries,
neither literate nor blind, whose weight
Bore down on the sand like a helmet
pressing his curls.
This fruit of the land remembers
the warmth of the braziers on its marbles
The dew on its columns
and in its branches the wind
Tossing into the cistern
the strength-bearing seeds,
Vengeful the storms and afterwards
the pines meagre as they are,
Slowly goes the animal
up the mountain edge,
For us carrying the bronze,
who will not be there at harvest.
THE OPEN SKIES
The Voice Tree
Of Anger and Sorrow
Growth
the parallel vines
from you to me
a white shadow, a break
on the window, a cast
To my tears that fall straight
as the birch, thick and round
as bulbs at your base.
Seasons, horizons,
natal days and those
that are dark
I celebrate wisely
or with terror or watch
the leaves as they fall
minutely and crack
the wide underground.
Raven and bird from far-off
… at your neck
feathers of sea tern
tree of iodine and blue …
When you are spine
and leafless branch
how you will rage
you will force me
in the garden packed with snow
to surround you with fire
to pad your roots with ash
the red flames to your green throat
the wild spark to your open mouth
Then your voice in the smoke
leaping and shouting
the icicles melting, melting.
Lights of My Eyes
Lights of my eyes
my only
they’re turning it off
while we’re asleep on this shore
and
