Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
from With Light and Death: 18
Translated from the Greek by Olga Broumas
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18
Even when they destroy you it will still be beautiful
The world because of you
your heart—true heart
In place of what they took from us—
Will still beat and a gratitude
From the trees you touched will cover us
Unshackled lightning how do they retie you
Now that I have no air no animal companion
Nor even a woodsman’s lost thunderbolt
I hear water running
maybe from God
(And I blaspheming) or from the mouth
Of a solitary who approached the peak’s most Secret
Keys
And opened them
for this I address You
Night of a Holy Tuesday with the irreplaceable pelago
Facing me—so you can tell it goodbye and thanks.
Odysseas Elytis (1911–1996) was born in Crete. He studied law at the University of Athens and in 1960 won the National Prize in poetry. The receiver of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Literature, his Collected Poems was published in 2004 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Olga Broumas is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Beginning With O (Yale University, 1977) and Sappho’s Gymnasium (Copper Canyon, 2000). She is currently the Poet-in-Residence as well as the Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University. (updated 6/2010)