water.
Fire and a brute art came among them.
Rain fell, tasting of the sky.
Trees grew, composing a grammar.
The river, the river you see was brought down
By force of prayer upon this fertile floor.
Now small skills: the fingers laid upon
The nostrils of flutes, the speech of women
Whose tutors were the birds; who singing
Now civilized their children with the kiss.
Lastly, the tripod sentenced them.
Ash closed on the surviving sons.
The brown bee memorized here, rehearsed
Migration from an inherited habit.
All travellers recorded an empty zone.
Between rocks âO deathâ, the survivors.
O world of bushes eaten like a moon,
Kissed by the awkward patience of the ant.
Within a concave blue and void of space.
Something died out by this river: but it seems
Less than a nightingale ago.
1943/ 1940
A NOCTUARY IN ATHENS
I
I have tasted my quantum of misfortune,
Have prayed before the left-handed woman;
Now as the rain of heaven downfalling tastes of space,
So the swimmer in the ocean of self, alone,
Utters his journey like a manual welcome,
Sculptures his element in search of grace.
II
I have sipped from the flask of resurrection,
Have eaten the oaten cake of redemption,
And love, sweet love, who weeps by the water-clock
Can bring if she will the sexton and the box,
For I wear my age as wood wears voluble leaves,
The temporal hunger and the carnal locks.
III
I have buried my wife under a dolmen,
Where others sleep as naked as the clouds,
Where others lie and weigh their dreams by ounces,
Where tamarisk, lentisk lean to utter sweets,
And angels in their shining moods retire:
Where from the wells the voice of truth pronounces.
IV
I have tasted my quantum of misfortune.
In the desert, the cities of ash and feathers,
In front of others I have spoken the vowel,
Knelt to the curly wool, the uncut horns;
Have carried my tribulation in a basket of wattle,
Solitary in my penitence as the owl.
V
I have set my wifeâs lip under the bandage,
O pound the roses, bind the eye of the soul,
Recite the charm of the deep and heal soon,
For the mountains accuse, and the skyâs walls.
Let the book of sickness be put in the embers.
I have tasted my quantum of misfortune.
1943/ 1940
DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
(1937)
This boy is the good shepherd.
He paces the impartial horizons,
Forty days in the land of tombs,
Waterless wilderness, seeking waterholes:
Knows the sound of the golden eagle, knows
The algebraic flute blue under Jupiter:
Supine in myrtle, lamb between his knees,
Has been a musical lion upon the midnight.
This was the good shepherd, Daphnis,
Timeâs ante-room by the Aegean tooth,
Curled like an umber snake above the spray,
Mumbling arbutus among the chalk-snags,
The Grecian molars where the green sea spins,
Suffered a pastoral decay.
This girl was the milk and the honey.
Under the eaves the dark figs ripen,
The leavesâ nine medicines, a climbing wine.
Under the tongue the bee-sting,
Under the breast the adder at the lung,
Like feathered child at wing.
Lifeâs honey is distilled simplicity:
The icy crystal pendant from the rock,
The turtleâs scorching ambush for the egg,
The cypress and the cicada,
And wine-dark, blue, and curious, then,
The metaphoric sea.
This was Chloe, the milk and honey,
Carved in the clear geography of Time,
The skeleton clean chiselled out in chalk,
For our Nigerian brown to study on.
From the disease of life, took the pure way,
Declined into the cliffs, the European waters,
Suffered a pastoral decay.
1943/ 1941
FANGBRAND
A BIOGRAPHY
For Stephan Syriotis
(Mykonos, 1940)
Fangbrand was here once,
A missionary man,
Borne down by the Oxus,
Pursued by the lilies,
Inhabited by the old voice of sorrows,
In a black hat and sanitary boots.
The island recognised him,
Giving no welcome, lying
Trembling among her craters:
The blue circlets of stone,
On a sea blotted with fictions.
He came to the wharf with
Fire and a brute art came among them.
Rain fell, tasting of the sky.
Trees grew, composing a grammar.
The river, the river you see was brought down
By force of prayer upon this fertile floor.
Now small skills: the fingers laid upon
The nostrils of flutes, the speech of women
Whose tutors were the birds; who singing
Now civilized their children with the kiss.
Lastly, the tripod sentenced them.
Ash closed on the surviving sons.
The brown bee memorized here, rehearsed
Migration from an inherited habit.
All travellers recorded an empty zone.
Between rocks âO deathâ, the survivors.
O world of bushes eaten like a moon,
Kissed by the awkward patience of the ant.
Within a concave blue and void of space.
Something died out by this river: but it seems
Less than a nightingale ago.
1943/ 1940
A NOCTUARY IN ATHENS
I
I have tasted my quantum of misfortune,
Have prayed before the left-handed woman;
Now as the rain of heaven downfalling tastes of space,
So the swimmer in the ocean of self, alone,
Utters his journey like a manual welcome,
Sculptures his element in search of grace.
II
I have sipped from the flask of resurrection,
Have eaten the oaten cake of redemption,
And love, sweet love, who weeps by the water-clock
Can bring if she will the sexton and the box,
For I wear my age as wood wears voluble leaves,
The temporal hunger and the carnal locks.
III
I have buried my wife under a dolmen,
Where others sleep as naked as the clouds,
Where others lie and weigh their dreams by ounces,
Where tamarisk, lentisk lean to utter sweets,
And angels in their shining moods retire:
Where from the wells the voice of truth pronounces.
IV
I have tasted my quantum of misfortune.
In the desert, the cities of ash and feathers,
In front of others I have spoken the vowel,
Knelt to the curly wool, the uncut horns;
Have carried my tribulation in a basket of wattle,
Solitary in my penitence as the owl.
V
I have set my wifeâs lip under the bandage,
O pound the roses, bind the eye of the soul,
Recite the charm of the deep and heal soon,
For the mountains accuse, and the skyâs walls.
Let the book of sickness be put in the embers.
I have tasted my quantum of misfortune.
1943/ 1940
DAPHNIS AND CHLOE
(1937)
This boy is the good shepherd.
He paces the impartial horizons,
Forty days in the land of tombs,
Waterless wilderness, seeking waterholes:
Knows the sound of the golden eagle, knows
The algebraic flute blue under Jupiter:
Supine in myrtle, lamb between his knees,
Has been a musical lion upon the midnight.
This was the good shepherd, Daphnis,
Timeâs ante-room by the Aegean tooth,
Curled like an umber snake above the spray,
Mumbling arbutus among the chalk-snags,
The Grecian molars where the green sea spins,
Suffered a pastoral decay.
This girl was the milk and the honey.
Under the eaves the dark figs ripen,
The leavesâ nine medicines, a climbing wine.
Under the tongue the bee-sting,
Under the breast the adder at the lung,
Like feathered child at wing.
Lifeâs honey is distilled simplicity:
The icy crystal pendant from the rock,
The turtleâs scorching ambush for the egg,
The cypress and the cicada,
And wine-dark, blue, and curious, then,
The metaphoric sea.
This was Chloe, the milk and honey,
Carved in the clear geography of Time,
The skeleton clean chiselled out in chalk,
For our Nigerian brown to study on.
From the disease of life, took the pure way,
Declined into the cliffs, the European waters,
Suffered a pastoral decay.
1943/ 1941
FANGBRAND
A BIOGRAPHY
For Stephan Syriotis
(Mykonos, 1940)
Fangbrand was here once,
A missionary man,
Borne down by the Oxus,
Pursued by the lilies,
Inhabited by the old voice of sorrows,
In a black hat and sanitary boots.
The island recognised him,
Giving no welcome, lying
Trembling among her craters:
The blue circlets of stone,
On a sea blotted with fictions.
He came to the wharf with
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