Odysseus Elytis - This Wind That Loiters

THIS WIND THAT LOITERS…

This wind that loiters among the quinces

This insect that sucks the vines

This stone that the scorpion wears next to his skin 

And these sheaves on the threshing floor

That play the giant to small barefoot children

The images of the

Resurrection

On walls that the pine trees scratched with their fingers

This whitewash that carries the noon-day on its back 

And the cicadas, the cicadas in the ears of the trees

Great summer of chalk

Great summer of cork

The red sails slanting in gusts of wind 

On the sea-floor white creatures, sponges

Accordions of the rocks

Perch from the fingers even of bad fishermen

Proud reefs on the fishing lines of the sun

No one will tell our fate, and that is that,

We ourselves will tell the sun’s fate, and that is that.

© Translation: Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard 

From: Sun the first 

I like this poem very much. Odysseus Elytis was born in Heraklion in 1911 and died in Athens in 1996. In 1979 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Most of his poetry is very difficult to understand, even in translation, so I was pleased to come across this one. 

I hope you like it,

Love Jane x