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Vol. 36 No 3-4
Greek Poetry: New Voices and Ancient Echoes

Spring 1999

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Yórgos Blánas

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Your Inescapable Flourishing (1990)

...und die findigen Tiere merken es 
schon, daß wir nicht sehr verläßilich 
zu Haus sind in der gedeuteten Welt. 
R.M. Rilke 

1 
Your first winter has passed 
like a painting before my window: 
tears in my eyes, I await the spring. 
Outside it snows; a warm snow like flakes of wool. 
Behind the fences my unborn children chase around 
and the diaphanous birds of light 
strike against the windowpane, dipping to drink my tears. 

2 
Now, O Lord, I know that it was your form 
in the sweet yielding of the dying day. 
I recall my father standing in the gateway of the yard, 
with his ruddy hands rustling 
in his trouser pockets. 
He thinks of nothing in particular, perhaps 
that the roof needs seeing to 
now that the weather has cleared. 
Yet, something in that deep 
blue afternoon tells him 
that he has defeated death 
— something like a feeling of ease 
in his newly polished shoes. 

3 
The patience of the night holds me and I remain awake. 
My soul a slender branch in your hands 
struggles to frighten off all sleeplessness to come. 
The nights stand, white unmoving forms 
under the great patience of the stars, 
and the wind, like the deep 
sigh that struggled to fend itself from time, 
brings a morning sweetness that transfixes 
and a flood of ferment. 

4 
I do your bidding, O Lord, and bow to your sleep, 
flouting all that dazzling terror 
which fills the night with startling cries, 
with barefooted lamentation, 
with teeming homes; there's always 
some broken drawer, 
a door that's jammed, 
a tap that drips, 
always something small and trivial 
that refuses to acknowledge 
the power of death. 
I do your bidding and know that you will stand by me — 
like the dog that lets itself 
sink obstinately into worship 
of the tomb of its loved one, 
choosing rather to take the unknown path to death 
than to accept the lonely surety of a stranger's hand. 

5 
You used to scatter delicious summer nights: 
the sky above, a magnificent hall of light, 
and all the light of the day forged
into intoxicating perfumes
Where has your old bountifulness gone? 
What dark need brings you 
a beggar to the troubled gateway of memory? 
Many-coloured ship 
You sailed into my azure expectation. 
Now I finger your body: silent. 
I finger my hands: blood.

6 
With what images, O Lord, do you test my blind heart? 
How may my feeble memory endure such light? 
With time — you know time well: silent wound, 
just as you think it has closed, it has passed, 
the memories start to fester — 
I sink into a naked ripeness, 
no branch to hold on to, 
no rock to rest on, 
and whatever I think I've grasped: 
a burning day whose heat repels me. 
And wherever I think I've stood: 
mute night swallows me up. 

7 
I abandoned myself into your wooden hands 
listening to time tick by 
greedily in the night's heart. 
Small consolation 
your withered fingers and still less 
the hope borne in your few leaves. 
Yet it never crossed my mind 
that I might be lost in this world, 
wandering in a forest of self-slain hope. 
Yet I never thought that 
all the unrelenting toil of time might empty 
beliefs and certainties, 
forms and colours long-held. 
I abandoned myself, I didn't think, but still I hope 
for your inescapable flourishing. 

8 
Life is not the place 
for the one who accepted your outstretched arms. 
Whatever the day on which you tread, it sinks, 
whatever the hour on which you stand, it tumbles into ruins, 
leaving in suspense that 
self-evident alliance against time, 
emptying the space that others had filled inside you. 
Life is not the place 
for the one who, alone, returned from your embrace. 

9 
Grant that I endure to the end.
I know, I shall walk the course of life — 
a trivial endeavour: just one hard night 
of breathless running and then all condenses 
into a trivial gesture, 
a fine trembling at the corner of the lips; 
so say that it was you who passed 
through this great lull of souls. 
But it isn't this, it isn't 
the uncertain course that disturbs me. 
I shudder at the thought that all this 
May be nothing more than an instant for you, 
a brief pause in the unending 
ordeal of your living absence, 
and I strive 
to smother your face within myself. 
Yet you, unhesitating, 
lead him who denies you 
through deaths inaccessible 
and frightful returns. 

10 
How I have struggled to keep you within 
the limits of my own time; 
and there were occasions when I would rage 
at your childlike insistence 
on hiding yourself behind the shape of things, 
leaving me alone
in frightful doubt 
over my passion to confine 
all my sight to one image, 
all my thought to one song. 
How I've struggled to call you, and yet 
I know that we all grow up some time
— you included — 
transcending the shape 
of our gaze, the sound 
of songs that stir 
— tiny wee creatures — 
on our gigantic fingers. 
Yet I know that you have none other to watch you 
and listen to you 
than the wee creature that wriggles, beseeching 
the vast presence of your hands. 

11 
You are harsh, impassable, you don't tolerate so much as 
the slightest gesture of sorrow, 
a door that closed 
with the unforeseen certainty of death, 
the steps — timorous and slow — of the despairing: 
as if he's suddenly afraid of his rending, 
as if by giving in to his pain he will have to 
cross that limit beyond hope 
where life is indebted to death, 
the despair of nothingness — 
hoping in vain for an innermost collision 
with your harsh and impassable presence. 
You slide by, however, and move like a spirit 
to where your every angle seemed inviolate, 
standing sure between you 
and non-existence. 
You slide by, however, and move on, and from behind the light 
beckon another harshness that devastates your paternal love, 
and so I'm left with the fear of your far-off commands. 

12 
I fear you! 
How can I stand your power? 
If I could look at your face
as I look at the absolute presence of a mountain: 
serene, and given over to whatever 
my gaze retains from the devouring hunger of the distances, 
I could fear death 
I could feel pain: 
certain of the life passion 
that looks at me now, licking 
its predatory lips. 

13 
I am losing myself: I am afraid of 
every flutter of the leaves and every 
sigh of wind makes me tremble. 
Why is it that I lose my strength 
before the unflagging presence of time? 
I sow deaths in my dreams and struggle 
To keep myself from the impassiveness of plants. 
Suddenly you scream out the anguish of the beast 
and as the panic draws nigh, 
raging at rooms obstinately mute, 
you disappear through the half-open door of my days. 

14 
If it must be that one day you depart from the sleep of the child, 
abandoning your last recourse 
to the logical pliancy of angels, 
better that together we nurture 
the dark festival of nothingness; 
and if it must be that you disappear, 
taking with you all those images 
that once composed your flowering, 
better that I run behind you 
devoted wholly to the bitter 
suffering of oblivion, 
than hold on to the doomed 
reflection of your showings.

15 
A humble garden is all I ask of you: 
a small patch of jostling greenery; 
some trees, a corner 
where you may visit in the afternoons: cool 
helmsman of the earth, 
exhaling a smoke of intoxicating gleams; 
and, at most, a simple hut, 
the smallest effort of the void to shore up something 
of the swift-winged course of human affairs. 
I, standing at the gate, 
seeing whatever I held dear play 
reckless games in the light of the dying day, 
think to myself: that's all I ask of you, 
a humble garden, nothing else.


Translated by John C. Davies

Page(s) 170-176

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