Return

Holy, lionlike sleep
of the return, on the sand's
vast spaciousness.
In my heart my eyelids closed;
and radiance, like a sun, fills me.

The sea's sound floods my veins,
above me the sun
grinds like a milestone,
the wind beats its full wings;
the world's axle throbs heavily.
I cannot bear my deepest breath,
and the sea grows calm to the sand's edge
and spreads deep inside me.

The infinite caress exalts it
into a high-domed wave;
the cool seaweed
freshens me deep down;
the foam's lucid spindrift
breaks into spray in the pebbles;
beyond, where the cicadas stridulate,
the leaves' rustle dies away.

From far off comes a sound
that suddenly beats,
as a sail when the yardarm breaks:
it is the wind approaching,
it is the sun setting before me -
and one who is pure opens to its white presence
eyes that are kindred to it.

I leap up. My lightness
is equal to my strenght.
My cool forehead glows,
in the spring sunset
my body stirs deeply.
I gaze around me: the Ionian sea,
and my delivered land!

Angelos Sikelianos, Selected Poems, Edmund Keeley e Philip Sherrard (trad.), Denise Harvey, 1996