Yannis Ritsos
from VIGILANCE (1941-2)
The Silent Season
1.
Change
A balcony suspended in the sky,
a little cloud that embitters the sea - the cloud grows,
a shepherd's fire goes out in the woods after rain.
Evening gathers her damp petticoats from the wire
before lighting her lamp behind the mountain.
The colours and the children leave, only the stones remain,
the blood drains from the day's veins,
two broad, flat raindrops dissolve in water,
the cigarette smoke is the face of the smoker on the quay.
Now we must close the shutters,
we must bring our landscapes inside. It is humid.
Twilight lingers on the window panes, distant,
like a programme from a local folk festival when the crowds disperse
and the little coffee houses and tavernas of the square empty.
Shadow clings to the sheepfolds and island houses
as coal-dust clings to the face of the stoker. No-one has come.
But still you hold in your palms
the osier's embittered breath,
the acrid wind of the vineyard
and a patch of sea visible behind the mesh of a pine bough.
They have not taken everything from us.
Soon our night will arrive to end the silence with a star quatrain,
to leave its great pickaxe at our door,
and leave its silent moon hanging beside us
as our mother before going to sleep leaves her wedding ring on the bedside table.
The sea stays behind the closed eyelashes,
a half-seen face glimpsed behind the bars of rain.
The drunken sailor scratched the name of his sweetheart with a pocket-knife
on the door of the tavern, in the foreign harbour
at the hour when dawn was taking a large rusty key from its pocket
and was unlocking the granaries and coal cellars.
We said something simple then - I don't remember what,
I have kept only the sound of your voice
in the same way as the warmth of two bodies lingers on morning sheets.
And we knew that nothing had been lost. We knew it well.
Later we went out onto the road. The road was a stranger.
The light measured the loneliness of the previous night.
The station clock was like the last page of a book
and everything you were saying brought from your mouth the name of our homeland,
the way you'd unpack a thick rustic vest from a travelling case.
Thus nightfall found us on the street. The streetlamps didn't know us.
The houses didn't wish us good evening. The windows peered inward.
The bell for the change of watch is leaden
and yesterday's wild weather and the bulb of the customs house -
But again above the masts, above the chimneys
that spring star - look! - has no intention of waning,
like an old date inscribed on the wall of a cabin
by the doleful hand of the captain's lady.
And here the night that goes grubby and barefoot,
the night comes like a tame black dog of the port
falling asleep on the sacks of our souls, facing the sea.
The night is waiting for something. So are we.
Before too long we shall hear from afar the whinnying wind.
A large drop of water will say: I remember,
another will say: I'm beginning again.
The sponge divers who have taken as kin the weeds of the deep
will come up on the wharf to light their pipes
and gaze at the stars and the weather omens,
and make fast the mooring lines
while we ascend twice the number of stairs as we descended
until all the colours of the chart dissolve into one.
See how already, above the town,
the wind is pasting large posters of clouds.
- Translated from the Modern Greek -