O my struggle with Time!
Greek centuries, scattered drums of a Dorian column
that has crumbled to the ground
from unexpected earthquakes!
how will I manage to lift you up again
to the same secret axis,
facing the sun.
so as for the sun,
to always find first,
first thing the last?
O Pythian Law!
How am I going to listen to Thee,
How am I to support myself on Thee
for the Titanic deed?
How am I to seek thee?
Bent upon study
and ruins?
No, no!
Only upon myself!
Only within myself!
The way I hold the vertebrae
of my very backbone
to be standing upright before my Destiny with my own Will
thus, only thus will I find Thee deep inside me, o Pythian Law
you that you will lift to the same axis
the Greek centuries
scattered drums of a Dorian column
that has crumbled to the ground from unexpected earthquakes!
The same way as my very backbone
with my own toil
only with the breath of my will!
O History!
part only of the gigantic melody
that buzzes inside the depth of my veins,
invincible rhythm and ocean!
Only deep within me
will I resurrect your extinguished Harmony
unyoked and vibrating
inside my blood
your secret unsilenced pulse!
Deep inside me
and inside the non-rejoicing breath of my people
will I drink the counter-soul of Charon
to erect body to body my spirit
to falling off!
To summon, a worker myself,
the diggers, the sowers
for the new,
first sowing,
eagerly awaited for by the non-fertilized earth!
To see once more
not as a vision, but alive, fruit and truth
before my eyes
the secret Eleusinian Ear,
larger, more mature than Apelles' ear,
that upon it a pigeon was heavily resting,
which nevertheless he was keeping unbent and upright!
And last to stoop,
an arch-priest myself,
and silently thresh it,
and lift it amidst all the people,
the People-Humanity,
as a betrothal of the new,
victorious by now Apollo,
above the Time-Snake,
of your open unreigned century,
of your new betrothal,
o Greece, with Life!
Á. Sikelianos, Lyrikos Vios, v. 3, Athens, Ikaros editions, 1976, pp. 237-239.
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