I have seen in the night <br />the sharp peak of the mountain, <br />seen the plain beyond flooded <br />with the light of an invisible moon, <br />seen, turning my head, <br />black stones huddled <br />and my life taut as a chord <br />beginning and end <br />the final moment: <br />my hands. <br /> <br />Sinks whoever raises the great stones; <br />I've raised these stones as long as I was able <br />I've loved these stones as long as I was able <br />these stones, my fate. <br />Wounded by my own soil <br />tortured by my own shirt <br />condemned by my own gods, <br />these stones. <br /> <br />I know that they don't know, but I <br />who've followed so many times <br />the path from killer to victim <br />from victim to punishment <br />from punishment to the next murder, <br />groping <br />the inexhaustible purple <br />that night of the return <br />when the Furies began whistling <br />in the meager grassQ <br />I've seen snakes crossed with viper~ <br />knotted over the evil generation <br />our fate. <br /> <br />Voices out of the stone out of sleep <br />deeper here where the world darkens, <br />memory of toil rooted in the rhythm <br />beaten upon the earth by feet <br />forgotten. <br />Bodies sunk into the foundations <br />of the other time, naked. Eyes <br />fixed, fixed on a point <br />that you can't make out, much as you want to: <br />the soul <br />struggling to become your own soul. <br /> <br />Not even the silence is now yours <br />here where the mill stones have stopped turning. <br /> <br />October 1935<br /><br />Giorgos Seferis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ii-mycenae/
