This body that hoped to flower like a twig,
to produce fruit and to turn into a flute in the frost
imagination has thrown it into a noisy bee-hive
that the musical rhythm may go through it and torture it.
George Seferis – Collected Poems
Day: 12/25/2025
The Unquiet Land
excerpt
What words, thoughts, ideas or emotions would change the soul of Finn MacLir?
Oh God, Father in Heaven, Padraig prayed silently, help me to help this man.
“Will they be married?” Padraig knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the flabby words had fallen from his lips.
“Ha! You Christians. They are married. As married as they’ll ever be. The first night Michael had the temerity to brave that dark loaney from the cottage, sneak in here, creep up the stairs and take her, Caitlin was his. He’ll come to see me in his own good time and ask my blessing. Right now he’s eating what he thinks is stolen fruit, and it savours so much sweeter for the risk.”
Finn’s inconceivable lack of concern for his daughter’s welfare shocked the saintly priest. “Is it a good match, Finn?”
“Why shouldn’t it be? She’s a woman, he’s a man. That’s the usual match, isn’t it?”
“But would their union be blessed by God in church?”
“Ah, that’s your concern, is it?” Finn shifted his weight in the chair. “A good marriage doesn’t have to be blessed by that damned God of yours, Padraig. And many who married in church have lived to regret it. Don’t worry about Caitlin.”
“But what if Caitlin finds she is going to have a child?” Padraig asked.
“Maybe that’s when Michael will come for my blessing,” Finn said. “Padraig, you have a lot yet to learn about life. And maybe a few years in this parish will teach you some of it. But for you it will only be a continuation of your book-learning or your school lessons. You’ll hear about it; but you won’t take part in it yourself. You take life too seriously. You take no joy in it.”
Padraig felt hurt by Finn’s words but tried not to show it. He recalled the big fellow with the tousled, yellow hair at the table this evening. “I think Caitlin could do a lot better,” he said.
Finn clenched his teeth, and the muscles of his jaw stood out like tumours. “Do you know, Padraig, I could despise you for a remark like that. You would have her marry a lawyer, a businessman, a doctor? A Clifford Hamilton, say? Would that guarantee for Caitlin a happier life than she would have with Michael? No, it doesn’t. Clifford Hamilton has been chasing her for years and she won’t have him. And not because he’s younger than she is. She’s too wise. She prefers Michael Carrick. People like you, like Flynn Casey, no doubt like Clifford Hamilton, don’t know what Caitlin sees …
Orange
Poem
Write a poem for me
to talk of love
you said
it’ll describe your lips
I said
it will capture their smile
it will accentuate their colour and
I bowed in awe
as if before the statue
of naked Eros
Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume II
The Change
A balcony hanging from the sky
a little cloud that embitters the sea — the cloud
enlarges;
the fire of a shepherd, in the forest, is put out
by the rain.
The evening gathers its moist undergarments from
the cloths line before it lights its fire behind the mountain.
Colors fade away, children leave, only the stones remain;
the blood of the day is shed off its veins
two big raindrops melt in the water
the cigarette smoke is of that person who smokes
at the quay.
We have to close our window shutters now
to take inside our images. There’s dumbness.
The faraway dusk remains on the window panes like
the program of the folk festivity after the people disperse
and the small cafes and taverns quieten down.
Shadows get glued on the fence-walls and on the houses
of the island like coal dust is glued on the face of the stoker.
No one has come.
And yet you still hold the bitter breath of the osier
in your hands, the pungent air of the grapevine
and a piece of the sea we saw behind the net
of a pine tree branch. They haven’t taken
everything from us.
Soon our night will come to finish silence with
the quatrain of a star
leaving its big spade in front of our door
and its silent moon hanging next to us
like the mother puts her wedding ring on the night table
before she goes to sleep.
The sea remains behind the closed eyelids
a half seen face behind the withes of the rain.
The drunken sailor was engraving the name of his beloved
on the tavern door, far away at the foreign harbour
when at daybreak the dawn took out of its pocket
a large rusted key
and unlocked the storage rooms of the wheat and coal.
Then we said something simple — I don’t remember it,
I only kept the echo of your voice
like the warmth of bodies that remains on the bedsheets
in the morning and we knew that nothing was lost.
We knew it well.
Then we went out to the road; it was an unfamiliar road.
The light was counting the loneliness of last night.
The clock of the Station was like the last page of a book
and each time you spoke, the name of our motherland
came out of your mouth
like you take out of the old suitcase the thick flannel
shirt of a farmer.
Thus night found us in the middle of the road. The lights
didn’t recognize us, the houses didn’t say good evening to us,
the windows looked inward.
The heavy bell announced the shift change, yesterday’s
rough sea, and the light bulb in the customs office.
Yet again, over the masts, over the chimneys
this spring star, look at it, doesn’t seem to fade
like an old date written by the saddened hand
of the captain’s wife inside the cabin.
And this smudged up and barefoot sauntering night,
arrives like a black, tamed, harbour dog that
leeps on the sacks of our souls opposite
the sea.
The night anticipates something. We do too.
Soon we shall hear the faraway neighing of the wind.
A large raindrop will say: I remember.
Another one will say: I start again.
The sponge gatherers who have become relatives of the sea floor
will climb up to the quay to smoke their pipe
to gaze the signs of the weather in the starlight
to secure the ropes of the boats
until we climb twice the number of steps we’ve descended
until all the colors of the map dissolve into just
one color.
Look, the wind already unglues the big signs
of the clouds.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 