"salamis" poems
A sign we are, without meaning
Without pain we are and have nearly
Lost our language in foreign lands,
For when the heavens quarrel
Over humans and moons proceed
In force, the sea
Speaks out and rivers must find
Their way. But there is One,
Without doubt, who
Can change this any day. He needs
No law. The rustle of leaf and then the sway of oaks
Besides glaciers. Not everything
Is in the power of the gods. Mortals would sooner
Reach toward the abyss. With them
The echo turns. Though the time
Be long, truth
Will come to pass.
But what we love? We see sunshine
On the floor and motes of dust
And the shadows of our native woods and smoke
Blooms from rooftops, at peace beside
Turrets' ancient crowns; for the signs
Of day are good if a god has scarred
The soul in response.
Snow like lilies of the valley,
Signifying a site
Of nobility, half gleams
With the green of the Alpine meadow
Where, talking of a wayside cross
Commemorating the dead,
A traveler climbs in a rage,
Sharing distant premonitions with
The other, but what is this?
By the figtree
My Achilles died
And Ajax lies
By the grottoes of the sea,
By streams, with Scamandros as neighbor.
In the persisting tradition of Salamis,
Great Ajax died
Of the roar in his temples
And on foreign soil, unlike
Patroclos, dead in king's armor. And many
Others also died. On Kithairon
Lay Eleutherai, city of Mnemosyne. And when
God cast off his cloak, the darkness came to cut
Her lock of hair. For the gods grow
Indignant if a man
Not gather himself to save
His soul, yet he has no choice; like-
Wise, mourning is in error.
Friedrich Holderlin
translated by Richard Sieburth
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 3:56 PM UTC
X. TO APHRODITE (6 lines)
(ll. 1-3) Of Cytherea, born in Cyprus, I will sing. She gives
kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her lovely face, and
lovely is the brightness that plays over it.
(ll. 4-6) Hail, goddess, queen of well-built Salamis and sea-girt
Cyprus; grant me a cheerful song. And now I will remember you
and another song also.
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The night was passing, and the Grecian host
By no means sought to issue forth unseen.
But when indeed the day with her white steeds
Held all the earth, resplendent to behold,
First from the Greeks the loud-resounding din
Of song triumphant came; and shrill at once
Echo responded from the island rock.
Then upon all barbarians terror fell,
Thus disappointed; for not as for flight
The Hellenes sang the holy pæan then,
But setting forth to battle valiantly.
The bugle with its note inflamed them all;
And straightway with the dip of plashing oars
They smote the deep sea water at command,
And quickly all were plainly to be seen.
Their right wing first in orderly array
Led on, and second all the armament
Followed them forth; and meanwhile there was heard
A mighty shout: "Come, O ye sons of Greeks,
Make free your country, make your children free,
Your wives, and fanes of your ancestral gods,
And your sires' tombs! For all we now contend!"
And from our side the rush of Persian speech
Replied. No longer might the crisis wait.
At once ship smote on ship with brazen beak;
A vessel of the Greeks began the attack,
Crushing the stem of a Phoenician ship.
Each on a different vessel turned its prow.
At first the current of the Persian host
Withstood; but when within the strait the throng
Of ships was gathered, and they could not aid
Each other, but by their own brazen bows
Were struck, they shattered all our naval host.
The Grecian vessels not unskillfully
Were smiting round about; the hulls of ships
Were overset; the sea was hid from sight,
Covered with wreckage and the death of men;
The reefs and headlands were with corpses filled,
And in disordered flight each ship was rowed,
As many as were of the Persian host.
But they, like tunnies or some shoal of fish,
With broken oars and fragments of the wrecks
Struck us and clove us; and at once a cry
Of lamentation filled the briny sea,
Till the black darkness' eye did rescue us.
The number of our griefs, not though ten days
I talked together, could I fully tell;
But this know well, that never in one day
Perished so great a multitude of men.
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PYTHAGORAS planned it. Why did the people stare?
His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.
No! Greater than Pythagoras, for the men
That with a mallet or a chisel" modelled these
Calculations that look but casual flesh, put down
All Asiatic vague immensities,
And not the banks of oars that swam upon
The many-headed foam at Salamis.
Europe put off that foam when Phidias
Gave women dreams and dreams their looking-glass.
One image crossed the many-headed, sat
Under the tropic shade, grew round and slow,
No Hamlet thin from eating flies, a fat
Dreamer of the Middle Ages. Empty eyeballs knew
That knowledge increases unreality, that
Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show.
When gong and conch declare the hour to bless
Grimalkin crawls to Buddha's emptiness.
When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side.
What stalked through the post Office? What intellect,
What calculation, number, measurement, replied?
We Irish, born into that ancient sect
But thrown upon this filthy modern tide
And by its formless spawning fury wrecked,
Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace
The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.
April 9,
2.3k
S is for Seduction, a vast verb saved for flesh,
But in her outer-worldly tune, my thoughts become enmeshed;
Like at the great Salamis, where strength sought strike the feeble,
Seduction marked our birth, their fall—an end without a sequel.
L heralds in some fifty lads, of whom mere five would pass,
Bugsy, Daphne, Sylvester, and Tazzy, above their peers compassed.
The tests were long, the trials were tough, from nothing we had fostered
A team of lucky, noble lads to fight these migrant monstærs.
A is the assault, outnumbered and outclassed,
Our heroes boldly braved their foes until their stalwart last.
Despite their lead by tyrants, such Nawt of Hispaniola,
Our foes were forced unto retreat, costing us Lady Lola.
M is for the ones who’ve fallen, for them mourn reminiscence,
For those who proudly placed their names for our petty subsistence.
The fight is done, the beasts beat back, denied all loot and hoarding,
And so a statue is ***** Honorum Mikael Iordan!
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 1:05 PM UTC
Within the tiny Pantheon
We stood together silently,
Leaving the restless crowd awhile
As ships find shelter from the sea.
The ancient centuries came back
To cover us a moment’s space,
And thro’ the dome the light was glad
Because it shone upon your face.
Ah, not from Rome but farther still,
Beyond sun-smitten Salamis,
The moment took us, till you stooped
To find the present with a kiss.
2k
Deep in the ocean,
where the sun
doesn’t reach
and the galleys
of Salamis sleep,
the fish-moons
pass
on tip-toe.
In yellow
the time is shining,
forged
to the oars
of once passed
foam
in flags
dreamers of eternity.
But it happens to me
(at unsaid hour)
in the moon garden
of the sea
to meet the chained ones.
*Salamis - an island in Aegean Sea by which in October, 480 BC the Greek Navy defeats the Persian one and turns the course of action of the Second Greco-Persian War in favor of Greece.
The original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chBzZJIPC-Q
Jun 8, 2011
Jun 8, 2011 at 2:08 AM UTC