Yannis Ritsos [1]: From “The 4th dimension”

There was a taste – I don’t know – of deep azure dissolving […]
I was biting a sprig of myrtle so that I should not shout out.
Because I was aware that my mouth was widening for a great cry, and my teeth too were breaking apart, separating, to leave a way through for that cry.
I held it in.
It dissolved inside me.
This was the silence.
And I was airy – I could have flown […]
There I am, all made of light, wearing a thin mask of reality, rose and mauve […]
If I take off these bracelets, if I let down my hair at night, if I unfasten the laces of my sandals, if more than anything I take off these heavy necklaces that grasp my neck like fetters, I think that I shall flee upwards, I shall take to the air.
I would not like this.
Maybe that is why I wear them.
In some way they hold me down, though they always bother me – I wear them in my sleep, as if I were a dog that I myself have tethered outside a fallen doorway.


Yannis Ritsos: In [Complete Works: Poems, Vol. F – Fourth Dimension]-1979. 8th Edition. Greece, Athens: Kedros

**NOTE: The translation in English of this text in Greek, was by Andy & Philip Wilcox, who translated in English my book “Shadow: the silent companion through our life’s journey”.
This text is one of the Quotations that I include in my book, and its translation is used EXCLUSIVELY for the edition of my book and for my website.


 

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