Thermá (Samothráki)

The harbour’s just a jetty

lined with rocks,

                         an air

brushing the lampposts

and shingle.

Over it looms the massive mountain,

the seat of Poseidon

when people still made sacrifices,

                         loved,

innocent of sin

and bearded men in robes

                          smelling of incense,

the sad blessings of the Lord.

The Springs that go back to those days

modestly suggest healing

where praying fails.

                          Plane trees

offer Thermá refuge on the slopes of mount Saos

peopled

                          by girls in Indian silk,

by the retired in search of longer life.

Resting in the music

                          of old idols,

reading the words

of the ancient poets

we wallow in the harmonies of crickets.

This is how to make the world stand still,

the way it does in winter

                          when almost everyone

awaits the summer on the mainland,

when sometimes snow

slides down the cracking roofs

and the mountains of Thrace stand out

clearly in steely, pre-human light.

Beyond the jetty

not even an abandoned dinghy

for anyone who’d risk the crossing;

                         as people once

must have drifted ashore

on something

that inspired a faith in this far island,

urged on by a dream, a vision

                         or the fear of gods,

those creations of the half-unconscious mind

that weighed down the earth

with an undamped power

still smouldering

                         in all our life-imaginings.

Poseidon

on his sharp-upreaching throne

uncomfortably presides

over a handful of houses, the Springs,

                          the church

that sets its bells against the music,

making us drift away

to days that in our minds reshape themselves,

                          reshape themselves again :

the road down to the harbour

a straight line

in this landscape of mountain

and primeval tree.

Original title: Loutrá (Samothráki)

From: Kees Klok, In dit laagland. Gedichten, Wagner & Van Santen, 2005.

Re-written in English by the author and Susan Wicks.