spilling crimson says....The Monogram
by Odysseas Elytis
I will always mournhear me?for you, alone, in Paradise.
I
Fate, like a switchman, will turn
Elsewhere the lines of the palm
Time will concede for one moment
How else, since man loves and is loved
The heavens will perform our insides
And innocence will strike the world
With the scythe of deaths blackness.
II
I mourn the sun and I mourn the time that comes
Without us and I sing of others whove passed
If this is true
The bodies addressed and boats sweetly gliding by
The guitars that flicker under the waters
The believe me and the dont
One in the air and one in the music
The two small animals, our hands
That tried to climb one another in secret
The flowerpot cool through the open garden gate
And the parts of sea coming together
Beyond the dry-stone wall, beyond the hedge
The windflower you held in your hand
Whose purple shuddered three times for three days above the waterfall
If this is all true, I sing
The wooden beam and square tapestry
On the wall, the Mermaid with tresses unbraided
The cat that watched us in the dark
A child with incense and the red cross
The hour when night falls on unapproachable rocks
I mourn the garment that I fingered and the world came to me.
III
Like so I speak of you and me
Because I love you and in love I know
How to enter in like the full moon
From everywhere, about your small foot in the boundless sheets
How to pluck the jasmineand I have the power
To blow the wind and take you in sleep through the moons passages and the seas secret colonnade
Hypnotized tree of silvering spiders
The waves have heard of you
How you caress, how you kiss
Around the neck, around the bay
How you whisper the what and the eh
Always we the light and the shadow
Always you the little star and always I the dark vessel
Always you the harbor and always I the light shining from the right
The wet jetty and the glint on the oars
High on the vine-laden house
The bound roses and cooling water
Always you the stone statue and always I the shadow that grows
You the hanging shutter and I the wind that blows it open
Because I love you and I love you
Always you the coin and I the worship that gives it value
So much the night, so much the humming in the wind
So much the mist in the air, so much the stillness
Around the despotic sea
Heavenly arch full of stars
So much your faintest breath
That I no longer have anything else
Within these four walls, this ceiling and floor
But to call for you and for my own voice to hit me
To smell your scent and for people to fear
Because people cant bear the untried
And foreign and its early you hear
Its early still in the world my love
To speak of you and me.
IV
Its early still in this world, do you hear me
They havent tamed the beast, do you hear me
My wasted blood and sharp, hear me, knife
Like a ram running across the heavens
Breaking the tails of comets, hear me
I am, hear me
I love you, hear me
I hold you and I take you and I dress you
In the white gown of Ophelia, hear me
Where do you leave me, where do you go and who, hear me
Holds your hand above the flood
The enormous flames and volcanic lava
Will bury us, hear me, and the day will come
A thousand years later when we will be, hear me
Shining fossils, hear me
For the heartlessness of men to burnish, hear me
And throw above them in a thousand pieces
And on the waters one by one, hear me
I measure my bitter pebbles, hear me
And time is a great church, hear me
Where once the forms
Of saints
Shed true tears, hear me
The bells ring loudly, hear me
I cross a deep ford
Where the angels wait with candles and funeral psalms
I go nowhere, hear me
Neither or both together, hear me
This flower of the storm and, hear me
Of love
Once and for all, we pick it
And it never comes to flower anywhere else, hear me
On another earth, on another star, hear me
There isnt soil, there isnt air
That we touch, the same, hear me
And no gardener was ever so lucky
To produce such a flower from such a winter, hear me
And such northern winds, only we, hear me,
In the middle of the sea
Only from the mere wish for love, hear me
Raised an entire island, hear me
With caves and capes and crags in bloom
Listen, listen
Who speaks in the waters and who cries, hear
Who seeks the other, who calls, hear
I am the one who calls and I am the one who cries, you hear me
I love you and I love you, hear me.
