The Closed Eyelids The Closed Wings

This is farewell. You shall be missed. Never to see you straight and tall as you walked with purpose and spoke it too. Never to share sweets and liquor in the morning. Never to sit on the balcony overlooking the street or in the tiny back kitchen dipping cookies into our teacups. Never to hear you laugh. Always to miss you.

Raven

by George Seferis

Years like wings.  What does the motionless raven remember?

What do the dead close to the roots of trees remember?

Your hands had the colour of an apple ready to fall.

and that voice which always returns, that low voice.

Those who travel watch the sail and the stars,

they hear the wind they hear the other sea beyond the wind

near them like a closed shell, they don't hear

anything else, don't look among the cypress shadows

for a lost face, a coin, don't ask,

seeing a raven on a dry branch, what it remembers.

It remains motionless just a little over my hours

like the soul of an eyeless statue;

there’s a whole crowd gathered in that bird

thousands of people forgotten, wrinkles obliterated

broken embraces and uncompleted laughter,

arrested works, silent stations

a deep sleep of golden spangles.

It remains motionless. It gazes at my hours. What does it remember?

There are many wounds inside those invisible people within it

suspended passions waiting for the Second Coming

humble desires cleaving to the ground

children slaughtered and women exhausted at daybreak.

Does it weigh the dry branch down? Does it weigh down

the roots of the yellow tree, the shoulders

of other men, strange figures

sunk in the ground, not daring to touch even a drop of water?

Does it weigh down anywhere?

Your hands had a weight like hands in water

in the sea caves, a light careless weight

pushing the sea away to the horizon to the islands

with that movement we make sometimes when we dismiss an ugly thought.

The plain is heavy after the rain; what does the black

static flame against the grey sky remember

wedged between man and the memory of man

between the wound and the hand that inflicted the wound a black lance,

the plain darkened drinking the rain, the wind dropped

my own impetus can’t shift it; who will shift it?

Within memory, a gulf - a startled breast

between the shadows struggling to become man and woman again

stagnant life between sleep and death.

Your hands moved always towards the sea's slumber

caressing the dream that gently ascended the golden spider-web

bearing into the sun the host of constellations

the closed eyelids the closed wings...

Coritsa. Winter 1937

© George Seferis