We who set out on this pilgrimage
looked at the broken statues
we forgot ourselves and said that life is not so easily lost
that death has unexplored paths
and its own particular justice;
that while we, still upright on our feet, are dying,
become brothers in stone
united in hardness and weakness,
the ancient dead have escaped the circle and risen again
and smile in a strange silence.
Ἐμεῖς ποὺ ξεκινήσαμε γιὰ τὸ προσκύνημα τοῦτο
κοιτάξαμε τὰ σπασμένα ἀγάλματα
ξεχαστήκαμε καὶ εἴπαμε πὼς δὲ χάνεται ἡ ζωὴ τόσο εὔκολα
πὼς ἔχει ὁ θάνατος δρόμους ἀνεξερεύνητους
καὶ μία δική του δικαιοσύνη·
πὼς ὅταν ἐμεῖς ὀρθοὶ στὰ πόδια μας πεθαίνουμε
μέσα στὴν πέτρα ἀδερφωμένοι
ἑνωμένοι μὲ τὴ σκληρότητα καὶ τὴν ἀδυναμία,
οἱ παλαιοὶ νεκροὶ ξεφύγαν ἀπ᾿ τὸν κύκλο καὶ ἀναστήθηκαν
καὶ χαμογελᾶνε μέσα σὲ μία παράξενη ἡσυχία.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, December 03, 2023
The Ancient Dead
George Seferis (1900-1971), Mythistorema 21 (tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard):