And the abyss rose up to my knees

Poetry has always been for me the raw material of my books, the metaphysical element of my vision. Poetry is the primordial material of lost memory, or else, the walking of the soul on the abyss. Today, as the journey reaches an end and I am reviewing my life over the course of time, I feel that this is just what I want to say.

 

I saw you, Lemnos

 

I saw you, Lemnos
Gleaming from stirred memories
Inside the seeds of your earth
I who laid my longings to rest in your blood
And raised from your earth my sunken land
Alone
I stood on the prow of my star
Carrying myself around in ephemerality
your landscapes
Cyclical movement of the eternal!

I saw you, Lemnos
Swathed in the fate of blood
Proudly abolishing death
Upright on the mane of the waves
Recanting death again and again
Cyclical ascent on my race's glory

I saw you
Muse once more raising the new times
Bearing blissful memory
I who spent centuries inside your earth
Seeking the sunken words
Pebbles polished by time
I who lived in the heart of your sun
And in the night of myth

I saw you
White and surrounded in waves
Rising from the night of your legend
And Selene as the sign for Sapho
Your golden ivory parts
With Alcamenis hands chiseling

This is how I carry you
A watery transparency
In my time on this earth
I
Earth of your earth
A transient little stone from your rock
And at nights times pass before my eyes
My soul
Sleepless memories
Unfolding

Anemoessa
In your matin's longings gold and ochre
And when your legends wake in my dreams
It is you
Who carry in my veins gentle times
You alone on the waves
Eternally travelled
In time
and glory

October, 1985