maandag 16 september 2013

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.