The Age of Blue Memory
Olive-trees and vines spreading to the sea,
And, beyond, red fishing-boats as far as memory.
The golden sheaths of August over our midday sleep
Full of sea-weed and shells. And this a green vessel
Newly built spelling in the waters’ peaceful embrace:
Our Lord will provide.
Like leaves, like pebbles the years went by,
I remember the young sailors leaving
With sails the colour of their hearts
They sang of the four horizons
They carried North winds tattooed on their chests.
What was I looking for when you came in the colour of dawn ?
The age of the sea in your eye
The health of the sun in your body
— ^What was I looking for
Deep in the sea-caves in those spacious dreams
Where the wind flung his feelings like foam,
A blue stranger carving his sea-emblem on my chest.
With sand on my fingers I clasped my fingers
With sand on my eyes I clasped my fingers
It was the sadness
I remember it was in April when I first felt your human heaviness
Your human body of clay and sin
As on our first day on earth
The amaryllis were being celebrated — remember
You suffered from a deep bite on the lips
A deep nail-mark on the skin
Where Time is being eternally traced.
I left you then
The wind thundered and swept the white houses
And scattered the clean white feelings over the sky
The light shining from a smile.
Now I shall have by my side a jug of immortal water
A form of the wind’s shattering freedom
And these your hands where love suffers
And this your shell where echoes the Aegean.
by Odysseus Elytis
Translation from the Greek by Nanos Valaoritis
from Poems From New Writing 1936 – 1946,
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