the port...

...there is a kind of mysterious and aristocratic pleasure in contemplating, while lying on the belvedere or resting his elbows on the jetty-head, all these movements of men who are leaving and men who are returning...
*
...il y a une sorte de plaisir mystérieux et aristocratique pour celui qui n'a plus ni curiosité ni ambition, à contempler, couché dans le belvédère ou accoudé sur le môle, tous ces mouvements de ceux qui partent et de ceux qui reviennent...

Yannis Stavrou, Piraeus Port, oil on canvas

Charles Baudelaire
Twenty Prose Poems
The Port

A port is a delightful place of rest for a soul weary of life's battles. The vastness of the sky, the mobile architecture of the clouds, the changing coloration of the sea, the twinkling of the lights, are a prism marvelously fit to amuse the eyes without ever tiring them. The slender shapes of the ships with their complicated rigging, to which the surge lends harmonious oscillations, serve to sustain within the soul the taste for rhythm and beauty. Also, and above all, for the man who no longer possesses either curiosity or ambition, there is a kind of mysterious and aristocratic pleasure in contemplating, while lying on the belvedere or resting his elbows on the jetty-head, all these movements of men who are leaving and men who are returning, of those who still have the strength to will, the desire to travel or to enrich themselves.

(trans. Michael Hamburger)

Charles Baudelaire
(Prose)
Le Spleen de Paris
Le port

Un port est un séjour charmant pour une âme fatiguée des luttes de la vie. L'ampleur du ciel, l'architecture mobile des nuages, les colorations changeantes de la mer, le scintillement des phares, sont un prisme merveilleusement propre à amuser les yeux sans jamais les lasser. Les formes élancées des navires, au gréement compliqué, auxquels la houle imprime des oscillations harmonieuses, servent à entretenir dans l'âme le goût du rythme et de la beauté. Et puis, surtout, il y a une sorte de plaisir mystérieux et aristocratique pour celui qui n'a plus ni curiosité ni ambition, à contempler, couché dans le belvédère ou accoudé sur le môle, tous ces mouvements de ceux qui partent et de ceux qui reviennent, de ceux qui ont encore la force de vouloir, le désir de voyager ou de s'enrichir.

as my unfading nightlight in memory...

When you reach that other world, don't become a cloud,
don't become a cloud, and the bitter star of dawn,
so that your mother knows you, waiting at her door...


Nikos Gatsos (1911-1992)

Nikos Gatsos

Rosewater

When you reach that other world, don't become a cloud,
don't become a cloud, and the bitter star of dawn,
so that your mother knows you, waiting at her door.
Take a wand of willow, a root of rosemary,
a root of rosemary, and be a moonlit coolness
falling in the midnight in your thirsting courtyard.
I gave you rosewater to drink, you gave me poison,
eaglet of the frost, hawk of the desert.

Dark Mother

I brought you up with soil and water
a young swallow to be and yet a wild creature,
to have you as my alphabet-book in the times
and as my unfading nightlight in memory.

But you, looking for the source of dreams
near the Virgin Mary,
developed wings, refused the land
our dark, our first mother.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: to have sailed across the diverse seas of the world...

and to have seen nothing, or almost nothing
except the face of a girl from Buenos Aires
a face that does not want you to remember it...

Jorge Luis Borges

Elegy

Oh destiny of Borges
to have sailed across the diverse seas of the world
or across that single and solitary sea of diverse names,
to have been a part of Edinburgh, of Zurich, of the two Cordobas,
of Colombia and of Texas,
to have returned at the end of changing generations
to the ancient lands of his forebears,
to Andalucia, to Portugal and to those counties
where the Saxon warred with the Dane and they mixed their blood,
to have wandered through the red and tranquil labyrinth of London,
to have grown old in so many mirrors,
to have sought in vain the marble gaze of the statues,
to have questioned lithographs, encyclopedias, atlases,
to have seen the things that men see,
death, the sluggish dawn, the plains,
and the delicate stars,
and to have seen nothing, or almost nothing
except the face of a girl from Buenos Aires
a face that does not want you to remember it.
Oh destiny of Borges,
perhaps no stranger than your own.

Comments & Greek artists: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: But I never heard any noise or sound of builders...

Konstantinos Kavafis

Walls

Without consideration, without pity, without shame
they have built great and high walls around me.

And now I sit here and despair.
I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.
Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.

But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.
Imperceptibly they shut me from the outside world

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: They came dressed up as "friends"...

Odysseas Elytis

They Came

They came
dressed up as “friends,”
came countless times, my enemies,
trampling the primeval soil.
And the soil never blended with their heel.
They brought
The Wise One, the Founder, and the Geometer,
Bibles of letters and numbers,
every kind of Submission and Power,
to sway over the primeval light.
And the light never blended with their roof.
Not even a bee was fooled into beginning the golden game,
not even a Zephyr into swelling the white aprons.
On the peaks, in the valleys, in the ports
they raised and founded
mighty towers and villas,
floating timbers and other vessels;
and the Laws decreeing the pursuit of profit
they applied to the primeval measure.
And the measure never blended with their thinking.
Not even a footprint of a god left a man on their soul,
not even a fairy’s glance tried to rob them of their speech.
They came
dressed up as “friends,”
came countless times, my enemies,
bearing the primeval gifts.
And their gifts were nothing else
but iron and fire only.
To the open expecting fingers
only weapons and iron and fire.
Only weapons and iron and fire.

Comments & Greek artists: Merry Christmas...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

The Twelve Days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me
a partridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Ten ladies dancing,
nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Eleven lords a-leaping, ten ladies dancing,
nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve fiddlers fiddling, eleven lords a-leaping, ten ladies dancing,
nine drummers drumming, eight sheep a-milking, seven swan a-swimming,
six geese a-laying, five golden ring, four calling birds,
three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists: The Night is in my Interest...

the night is in my interest.
First of all, it reduces ambition; moreover,
it corrects thoughts; then,
it collects the grief and makes it more bearable...

Nikos Karouzos

Suspension

In the sky, possibilities
are naught but thrilling.
As I was hanging in the air
holding on to a pure white cloud
on a mythic screen of the imagination,
I observed the quotations
of the elements of my blood
and heard a dazzling musical act
practically non-human
on the left of the geographical map
at the point at which Mt. Terror lies
always wreathed in lightning
and blinding storms.
I went up there once.
There I first heard the song
that said: we belong to water.
And on the other side Ecclesiastes shined.
For some time now I’ve known that the blood
contains all the mystery
which is given through signs
to the human mind, and complete discontinuity.
The circulation perhaps?
queried the brilliant pathologist.
And suddenly
Leonardo came to mind
who knew what exquisite information derives from the body.


Nikos Karouzos (1926-1990)

The Night is in my Interest

Indeed the night is in my interest.
First of all, it reduces ambition; moreover,
it corrects thoughts; then,
it collects the grief and makes it more bearable;
it dissects the silence with respect; in the gardens
it stresses smell,
but above all, night envelops.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: O World! O Life! O Time! On whose last steps I climb...

Poetry & Greek artists, contemporary Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Attica Landscape, oil on canvas

Percy Shelley

A Lament

O World! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more -Oh, never more!

Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more -Oh, never more!

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: My verses, children of my blood...

Greek poetry & Greek painting, Greek artists

Kostas Karyotakis
Wounded Gods
My Verses

My verses, children of my blood.
They speak, but I supply the words
like fragments of my heart,
I offer them like tears from my eyes. They go with bitter smiles
when I recount so much of life.
I girdle them with sun and day and sun
for when I'm overtaken by the night. They fix the limits of the sky and earth.
And yet my sons still wonder what is missing
always bored, worn down,
the only mother they have known is Grief. I pour out the laughter of the sweetest tune,
the aimless passion of the flute;
to them I am an unsuspecting king
who's lost his people's love. They waste away, they fade away, yet
never cease their quiet lamentation.
Pass by, Mortal, with averted gaze;
Lethe, carry me in your boat to bathe.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending...

Greek poets & Greek artists, modern Greek painters

or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight
the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence
there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending
like the branches of a terrible willow-tree...

Giorgos Seferis

The King of Asine

All morning long we looked around the citadel*

starting from the shaded side, there where the sea,
green and without luster—breast of a slain peacock—
received us like time without an opening in it.
Veins of rock dropped down from high above,
twisted vines, naked, many-branched, coming alive
at the water’s touch, while the eye following them
struggled to escape the tiresome rocking,
losing strength continually.

On the sunny side a long empty beach
and the light striking diamonds on the huge walls.
No living thing, the wild doves gone
and the king of Asine, whom we’ve been trying to find for
two years now,
unknown , forgotten by all, even by Homer,
only one word in the Iliad and that uncertain,
thrown here like the gold burial mask.
You touched it, remember its sound? Hollow in the light
like a dry jar in dug earth:
the same sound that our oars make in the sea.
The king of Asine a void under the mask
everywhere with us everywhere with us, under a name:
“Αsίνην te... Αsίνην te...”
and his children statues
and his desires the fluttering of birds, and the wind
in the gaps between his thoughts, and his ships
anchored in a vanished port:
under the mask a void.

Behind the large eyes the curved lips the curls
carved in relief on the gold cover of our existence
a dark spot that you see traveling like a fish
in the dawn calm of the sea:
a void everywhere with us.
And the bird that flew away last winter
with a broken wing:
abode of life,
and the young woman who left to play
with the dogteeth of summer
and the soul that sought the lower world squeaking
and the country like a large plane-leaf swept along by the
torrent of the sun
with the ancient monuments and the contemporary sorrow.

And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself
does there really exist
among these ruined lines, edges, points, hollows, and curves
does there really exist
here where one meets the path of rain, wind, and ruin
does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the
tenderness
of those who’ve shrunk so strangely in our lives,
those who remained the shadow of waves and thoughts with
the sea’s boundlessness
or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight
the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence
there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending
like the branches of a terrible willow-tree heaped in
permanent despair
while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes up-
rooted in the mud
image of a form that the sentence to everlasting bitterness
has turned to stone:
the poet a void.

Shieldbearer, the sun climbed warring,
and from the depths of the cave a startled bat
hit the light as an arrow hits a shield:
“Αsίνην te...Αsίνην te...” Would that it were the king
of Asine
we’ve been searching for so carefully on this acropolis
sometimes touching with our fingers his touch upon
the stones.

Asine, summer ´38—Athens. Jan. ´40

Comments & Greek artists, contemporary Greek artists: Your phantom is like the immortal sun!

The sunlight has darkened the flame of the candles;
Thus, ever triumphant, resplendent soul!
Your phantom is like the immortal sun!

Charles Baudelaire

L'Aube spirituelle

Quand chez les débauchés l'aube blanche et vermeille
Entre en société de l'Idéal rongeur,
Par l'opération d'un mystère vengeur
Dans la brute assoupie un ange se réveille.

Des Cieux Spirituels l'inaccessible azur,
Pour l'homme terrassé qui rêve encore et souffre,
S'ouvre et s'enfonce avec l'attirance du gouffre.
Ainsi, chère Déesse, Etre lucide et pur,

Sur les débris fumeux des stupides orgies
Ton souvenir plus clair, plus rose, plus charmant,
À mes yeux agrandis voltige incessamment.

Le soleil a noirci la flamme des bougies;
Ainsi, toujours vainqueur, ton fantôme est pareil,
Ame resplendissante, à l'immortel soleil!

Spiritual Dawn

When debauchees are roused by the white, rosy dawn,
Escorted by the Ideal which gnaws at their hearts
Through the action of a mysterious, vengeful law,
In the somnolent brute an Angel awakens.

The inaccessible blue of Spiritual Heavens,
For the man thrown to earth who suffers and still dreams,
Opens and yawns with the lure of the abyss.
Thus, dear Goddess, Being, lucid and pure,

Over the smoking ruins of stupid orgies,
Your memory, clearer, more rosy, more charming,
Hovers incessantly before my widened eyes.

The sunlight has darkened the flame of the candles;
Thus, ever triumphant, resplendent soul!
Your phantom is like the immortal sun!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: This song for mariners and all their ships...

Walt Whitman
In cabin'd ships, at sea

In cabin'd ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves--the large imperious
waves--In such,
Or some lone bark, buoy'd on the dense marine,
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under
many a star at night,
By sailors young and old, haply will I, a reminiscence of the land,
be read,
In full rapport at last.


Here are our thoughts--voyagers' thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be
said; 10
The sky o'erarches here--we feel the undulating deck beneath our
feet,
We feel the long pulsation--ebb and flow of endless motion;
The tones of unseen mystery--the vague and vast suggestions of the
briny world--the liquid-flowing syllables,
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy
rhythm,
The boundless vista, and the horizon far and dim, are all here,
And this is Ocean's poem.


Then falter not, O book! fulfil your destiny!
You, not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too, as a lone bark, cleaving the ether--purpos'd I know
not whither--yet ever full of faith, 20
Consort to every ship that sails--sail you!
Bear forth to them, folded, my love--(Dear mariners! for you I fold
it here, in every leaf;)
Speed on, my Book! spread your white sails, my little bark, athwart
the imperious waves!
Chant on--sail on--bear o'er the boundless blue, from me, to every
shore,
This song for mariners and all their ships.

Comments & Greek artists, contemporary Greek artists: In the garden the chrysanthemums were dying...

Kostas Karyotakis

In the garden the chrysanthemums were dying

In the garden the chrysanthemums were dying
like desires when you came. Calmly
you laughed, like little white flowers.
Silent, I made a sweetest song
out of the darkness deep within me
and the petals sing it up above you.

(translated by Peter J. King & Andrea Christofidou)

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: Motionless, I stay and go: I am a pause...

Octavio Paz

Between going and staying

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painting: When I was in my younger days, I sailed...

Umberto Saba

Ulysses

When I was in my younger days, I sailed
The coastlines of Dalmatia. Isles appeared
In bloom along the billows where sporadic
Birds hung in intent hunger over prey.
Those algae-slippery isles were glittering
Emeralds in gold sunlight. When a high
Tide and the night extinguished them, sails slipped
Leeward to deeper waters to evade
That perfidy. Today I am a king
Of no man's land. The harbor light is lit
For other men. I turn once more to sea
Impelled by an indomitable spirit,
By an excruciating love for life.


Umberto Saba (1883-1957)

Work

Once
my life was easy. The earth
gave me flowers fruit in abundance. Now I loosen ground that is dry and hard.
My spade
bangs against stones in the underbrush. I must
excavate far down. Like someone searching for treasure.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: Man is a god when he dreams and a beggar when he thinks...

What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven...

Friedrich Hölderlin

In My Boyhood Days

In my boyhood days
Often a god would save me
From the shouts and from the rods of men;
Safe and good then I played
With the orchard flowers
And the breezes of heaven
Played with me.

And as you make glad
The hearts of the plants
When toward you they stretch
There delicate arms.

So you made glad my heart,
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your darling,
Holy Luna.

O all you loyal,
Kindly gods!
Would that you knew how
My soul loved you then.

True, at that time I did not
Evoke you by name yet, and you
Never named me, as men use names,
As though they knew one another.

Yet I knew you better
Than ever I have known men,
I understood the silence of Aether,
But human words I΄ve never understood.

I was reared by the euphony
Of the rustling copse
And learned to love
Amid the flowers.

I grew up in the arms of the gods.


from In Lovely Blue

Like the stamen inside a flower

The steeple stands in lovely blue

And the day unfolds around its needle;

The flock of swallows that circles the steeple

Flies there each day through the same blue air

That carries their cries from me to you;

We know how high the sun is now

As long as the roof of the steeple glows,

The roof that’s covered with sheets of tin;

Up there in the wind, where the wind is not

Turning the vane of the weathercock,

The weathercock silently crows in the wind.


Quotes

What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.

We are nothing; what we search for is everything.

Man is a god when he dreams and a beggar when he thinks.

We were eager to have done and trusted to luck.

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists: I Had Been Leaving Coast of Misty Albion...

Marina Tsvetaeva

I Had Been Leaving Coast of Misty Albion

"I had been leaving coast of misty Albion."
How divine they are - this sadness and this height!
I see the dingy waves fall down and rise on,
The dingy firmament... I know that all by hart.

I see the youth that leaned upon the high mast's rope,
As beautiful as if he were by fairies born,
Wrapped in a coat. O! Let every virgin sob!
Cry, manhood! Cry, my misty Albion!

It's done! He is alone between these sky and flow!
There is a school for you who have been ‘gainst schools all!
And in a fatal heart, pierced with a star's arrow,
There enters in the king of fatal winds - Aeoll!


The roar of dingy waves is making the new ballad
Of wonderful his death from stars that libeled him on
Cry, Youth! Cry, Love! Cry, World! O, sob my dear Aellad!
Cry, little Ada! Cry, my misty Albion!


Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

The Seafarer

Rock me down, o starry skiff!
My head tired from waves, so stiff!

Very long I look for abode, –
My head tired from passions, hot:

Laurels – hymns – hydras – heroes, brazed, –
My head tired from senseless plays!

Lay me down mid leaves and grass, –
My head tired from ceaseless wars.

From Mirror's Plane Where...

From mirror's plane where clouds flow
In a dreamy way
I tried to force a path you go,
The final quay.

I see a mast in salty breeze --
You stand by side...
You go by train -- a dusky heath
Yields evening plight...

The evening heath is set in dew,
Crows are bold...
I bless you: let you go to
Four sides of world!

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists: Throughout the course of the generations men constructed the night....

Jorge Luis Borges

History of Night

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
thev sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhuastible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn't exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

Comments & Greek artists, Greek painters: Under the brown fog of a winter noon...

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon...

T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land
to Ezra Pound, "Il miglior fabbro"

(from) III. The Fire Sermon

The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept ...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water

Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc'd.
Tereu


T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest -
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which are still unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach
Past the Isle of Dogs.

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers

Weialala leia
Wallala leialala