Odysseus Elytis (1911-1995; trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
Drinking the Sun of Corinth
Drinking the sun of Corinth
Reading the marble ruins
Striding across vineyards and seas
Sighting along the harpoon
A votive fish that slips away
I found the leaves that the sun’s psalm memorizes
The living land that passion joys in opening.
I drink water, cut fruit,
Thrust my hand into the wind’s foliage
The lemon trees water the summer pollen
The green birds tear my dreams
I leave with a glance
A wide glance in which the world is recreated
Beautiful from the beginning to the dimensions of the heart!
Mirta Rosenberg (1951- ; trans. Julie Wark)
Ethereal Material
My children are by far my greatest revolution.
Twice I orbited complete
like a gravid planet
around the sun. I wrote new names
in the celestial script, with disquiet,
alarm, sedition.
I toasted them with other women,
with whisky and with beer,
in the planet where we women drink a toast
to things that grow, and despite them.
Happy and ill-fated, I made of my revolution
a conquest, and an open wound
of those times when I orbited complete.
I keep it fresh to let enter me
a certain unrecognisable family air
that now my children exhale
as naturally as can be.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
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