August Meditations 1. If a man in his forties is still drawing seas and dovecotes, if in his thought is reflected a sun more transparent, more lucid than the sun of reality, if the word “Amorgos” is not just the mask of a fleeting, adolescent memory, then between the poem of desire and the poem of necessity real loss is throbbing. 2. Prologues have been consumed. They cannot always substitute the topic. He must decide whether he can hold on to this absolute idea even if he has ceased to believe in its power. 3. Successive metamorphoses of paradise. The eye tries to interpret the enigma of beauty while Delos is slowly emerging in the horizon. Summer feels like an eternity. The poem begins to invent itself the moment he turns his face to the light. (The moment the imagination, freed from the sensation of the blazing white, vertically rises in the sky.) 4. Not one sail in the horizon tearing the canvas apart. The image of a tree with its wind-swept boughs scavenging the ground is not a part of the scenery today. Yet, the old lady creeping uphill on her knees tightly holding Her icon is. 5. The man is walking on the beach alone. He is still touched by the melodious whisper of the waves, the way the water is persistently lulling the rock to sleep. Nature around him (cedars, rotten fishing boats, shingles) has a melancholic, unaffected brightness. If he were to die at this moment, he would want to be here, in this place, where he has been before. Even for a while. For now. Haris Vlavianos © Translation by Mina Karavanta
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 09:45:51 +0000
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