Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (25 page)

A version by Ezra Pound, 1954

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G r e e k

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Kostis Pa l a m a s
(1859–1943)

Th

e Cypress Tree

I look out the window; the depth

of sky, all sky and nothing more;

and within it, utterly sky-swept,

a slender cypress; nothing more.

Whether sky is starry or dark,

in happy blue or thunder’s roar,

always the cypress sways, so stark,

calm, lovely, hopeless; nothing more.

David Mason, 1997

Ko s t i s Pa l a m a s
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C . P. C ava f y
(1863–1933)

Longings

Like the beautiful bodies who never aged,

shut away inside a splendid tomb by tearful mourners

with roses at their head and jasmine at their feet—

that’s what longings look like when they’ve passed away

without being fulfi lled, before they could be made complete

by just one of pleasure’s nights, or one of its shimmering mornings.

Manuel Comnenus

Th

e emperor Lord Manuel Comnenus

one melancholy morning in September

sensed that death was near. Th

e court astrologers

(those who were paid) were nattering on

that he had many years left yet to live.

But while they went on talking, the king

recalled neglected habits of piety,

and from the monastery cells he ordered

ecclesiastical vestments to be brought,

and he puts them on, and is delighted to see

to present the decorous mien of a priest or friar.

Happy are all who believe,

and who, like the emperor Lord Manuel, expire

outfi tted most decorously in their faith.

He Asked about the Quality—

From within the offi

ce where he’d been taken on

to fi ll an insignifi cant, ill-paid position

(eight pounds a month at best: bonuses included)

he emerged—when he’d fi nished the solitary task

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at which he’d been stooped the entire aft ernoon.

He left at seven, and then strolled slowly along,

and dawdled in the street.—Handsome;

interesting, too: in a way that showed he’d realized

a maximal yield from his senses.

He’d just turned twenty-nine, the month before.

He dawdled in the street, and in the shabby

alleyways that led to where he lived.

As he passed before a little store

where the goods that were for sale were

shoddy, low-priced things for laborers,

he saw a face within, he saw a shape;

they urged him on and he went in, as if keen

on seeing colored handkerchiefs.

He asked about the quality of the handkerchiefs,

and what they cost; in a voice that was choked,

almost stifl ed by his yearning.

So, too, the answers that came back:

distracted, in a voice kept very low,

secretly concealing consent.

Now and then they’d talk about the merchandise—but

their sole aim: for their hands to touch

atop the handkerchiefs; for their faces to

draw near, and their lips, as if by chance.

Some momentary contact of their limbs.

Quickly and secretly—so the proprietor

wouldn’t notice, sitting there in back.

Since Nine—

Half past twelve. Th

e time has quickly passed

since nine o’clock when I fi rst turned up the lamp

C . P. C ava f y
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and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,

without speaking. With whom should I speak,

so utterly alone within this house?

Th

e apparition of my youthful body,

since nine o’clock when I fi rst turned up the lamp,

has come and found me and reminded me

of shuttered perfumed rooms

and of pleasure spent-what wanton pleasure!

And it also brought before my eyes

streets made unrecognizable by time,

bustling city centres that are no more,

and theatres and cafés that existed long ago.

Th

e apparition of my youthful body

came and also brought me cause for pain:

deaths in the family; separations;

the feelings of my loved ones, the feelings

of those long dead which I so little valued.

Half past twelve. How the time has passed.

Half past twelve. How the years have passed.

Prayer

Th

e sea took into her depths a sailor’s life.—

His mother, unaware, goes and lights

a taper before the image of Our Lady

so that the weather might be fair, and his return speedy—

while at the wind she always strains her ears.

But as she prays the ikon hears,

solemn and full of mourning,

knowing that the son she awaits won’t be returning.

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Days of 1908

Th

at year he found himself without a job;

and so he made a living from cards,

from backgammon, and what he borrowed.

A job, at three pounds a month, at a little stationer’s,

had been off ered to him.

But he turned it down without the slightest hesitation.

It wouldn’t do. It wasn’t a wage

for him, a young man with some education, twenty-fi ve years of age.

Two or three shillings a day was what he’d get, sometimes not.

What could the boy possibly earn from cards and backgammon

in the coff eehouses of his class, the common ones,

however cleverly he played, however stupid the partners he chose?

And loans—then there were those loans.

It was rare that he’d manage a crown, more oft en it was half;

sometimes he’d settle for shillings.

Sometimes for a week, occasionally more,

when he was spared the horror of staying up till dawn,

he’d cool off at the baths, with a swim at morning.

His clothes were in a dreadful state.

Th

ere was one suit that he would always wear,

a suit of a very faded cinnamon hue.

Oh days of the summer of nineteen-hundred eight,

your vision, quite exquisitely, was spared

that very faded cinnamon-colored suit.

Your vision preserved him

as he was when he undressed, when he fl ung off

the unworthy clothes, and the mended underwear.

And he’d be left completely nude; fl awlessly beautiful; a thing of wonder.

C . P. C ava f y
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His hair uncombed, springing back;

his limbs a little colored by the sun

from his nakedness in the morning at the baths, and at the seashore.

Voices

Imagined voices, and beloved, too,

of those who died, or of those who are

lost unto us like the dead.

Sometimes in our dreams they speak to us;

sometimes in its thought the mind will hear them.

And with their sound for a moment there return

sounds from the fi rst poetry of our life—

like music, in the night, far off , that fades away.

Daniel Mendelsohn, 1997 (revised)

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Ya nnis R itsos
(1909–90)

Level Duration

Foundations under foundations. Th

e churches under the houses.

Belfries above the houses. At what depth of rock

does the root of the fi g tree grasp? On what branch of the wind

does the gold-winged Archangel grasp? We will ascend above

supported on the shoulders of the dead, with the earth on our chests,

in a procession of ruins, and the prickly pears arranged

along the length of time, mute, unresponsive,

with their broad hands blunting the clang of the buried churchbell.

Announcement

Th

ese rocks he carries on his shoulders he carves into his stools and his

wings.

Here were Stavroula, Nina, Aliki, Th

ekla, Ourania—

they sang toward the sea from their balconies under an enormous moon,

they took the blue dye for love, plaited songs in their hair.

Th

e rowers took up to the citadel their broken oars. One Sunday morning

before the scorching heat of July set in, a handsome equestrian appeared in

the doorway

and rode his white horse down into the church. “Stop”—he said—

“I’ve brought the keys.” He dismounted and advanced, pulling his horse by

the reins,

and placed the black chest with its golden nails in front of the Holy Altar

Door. Th

e Elkomenos Christ

raised his lowered eyelids. But even now the horseman did not cross himself;

he jumped

once more on his saddle, mounted up the stone stairs, hoofs pounding, and

went out. He left behind him

smoke, incense, clouds of dust, speechless archangels, priests, chanters, and

the entire congregation.

Ya n n i s R i t s o s
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Remembrances

Your boyhood years waited for you in forgotten corners,

in demolished buildings, in Byzantine arcades—

the barber shop was there; there the shoemaker’s, over there

must have been the fi sh store—the low stone wall bears a resemblance. Th

e

woman

with the very long hair—the mailman had abducted her;

aft erward she died. It was raining. Th

e four children

had locked themselves in the other room. Th

ey held

the old sea-blue chest. We didn’t have more time—

events one on top of the other, wars and wars, expatriations, books,

half-fi nished recollections, loves, the closed well;

the parish priest omitted names—who remembers them? Later

the same child, during leap years, lugging water in a basket,

and the ordeal of the great desolation on the shattered watch towers.

Kimon Friar and Kostas Myrsiades, 1981

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Hu n g a r i a n

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At til a József
(1905–37)

To Sit, to Stand, to Kill, to Die

To give this chair a wicked shove,

to sit in front of a fast train,

cautiously to climb a mountain,

to shake my knapsack down below,

to feed bees to my feeble spider,

to caress someone’s old woman,

to sip good tasting bean soup,

there is mud—to walk on tiptoes,

to put my new hat on the tracks,

to skirt the bank of a blue lake,

to squat, clothed, on its bottom,

to sunbathe amid tinkling foam,

to fl ower with the sunfl owers,

or to sigh for something, fi ne, good,

to simply brush a fl y away,

or just wipe off my dusty book,

to spit in my mirror’s center,

to embrace my dark enemies,

to kill them all with a long knife,

to study how their blood drips, drips,

or to watch a girl turn, legs, hips,

to make Budapest a bonfi re,

to wait for birds to come to crumbs,

to slam my bad bread to the ground,

to force my good lover to cry,

to comfort her little sister,

if I owe accounts to this world,

to leave them, it, unaccounted for—

O binding me, dissolving me,

who now makes me write this poem,

At t i l a Józ se f
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who makes me laugh, who makes me cry,

my life, who makes me choose.

Attila József

He was merry, good, and perhaps stubborn

when they crossed him in his beliefs.

He liked to eat and in one or two things

he bore a striking resemblance to god.

From a jewish doctor he got a coat,

while most of his relatives called him:

Hope-Never-To-See-You-Again.

In the orthodox church he found no rest—

only priests. His decay was like his country’s.

Well, that’s life, don’t anyone cry.