Manólis Pratikákis
From: The Dormition and Resurrection of the Bodies of Domenicos (1997)
Toledo
I
From Fodele to Toledo — how well
the two places ring
like tremendous weddings, like to
unbearable wildernesses.
And from the winged precipice of his adolescence
to the 'Burial (1586) of Count
Orgaz', what daemons within him
ministering all night long, what voices
of belated angels suddenly waking
in the parched olive groves.
Within him he had unfashioned forms, unlaid
landscapes of sky for the slope's
deification and in the sweet señorita
sowing his son Jorges Manuel
to roam in the lanes of two worlds.
(I sought your steps from the porta del
Sol to San Martin's Bridge; and
on your easel I left an orange blossom
from the same earth as those you smelled
when eleven years' old.) The faces were
there: figures divinely disfigured.
As though conceived in shining
darkness and in light; as though
their holy deposit were like to the light.
As if by an oversight soaring towards
the heavens.
II
Yet with those tears of Peter's
which like molten silver on the burner
took his soul centuries
to heat. With his trembling hand
which emerges from trembling
leaves of paradise
he sought forgiveness for us all.
X
The bodies are divested of their darkness
by your hand; their perishable
nature is scattered, rust-slag
of time.
Like a perfect martyrdom each angel
is frightening. But your own
demands the impossible:
Wrapped in lost branches
for you to gather from childhood sands
the velvet ivy of light.
XII
He sets the bellows moving in the darkness
and the wind touches on burning coals;
and with hammerings he turns the metal
into lava.
Around the empty dwelling, there
in the center. Like the breath of an unborn
dancer.
A upstanding chorus of curved petals
that petal by petal encircle
love, encircle the dirge.
Petal by petal a rose
is born.
His land would shine from within
as if they were opening aquatic
skylights; as if the Fates were waking up
to weave his flames deep
in a well.
Translated by David Connolly and Avi Sharon
Page(s) 34-35
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