This poem was published in Seferis’s 1935 collection of poems, Mythistorima (Novel). As with the Ritsos poem I translated here I find strong resonances with the political and social situation in our own country at the moment.
I was puzzled by what Seferis meant when he said that Greece was ‘closed’ and it was not until I understood the mythological reference in the penultimate verse that it became clear. He seems to be implying that Greece is closed off from the outside world by the Clashing Rocks, perhaps by the Metaxas dictatorship.
The rocks not only kill those who try to escape, but are also killing the people who still live in Greece because they are cutting it off from the rest of the world, causing rivers, springs and wells to dry up, and everything to become stagnant and hollow. Everything has closed in on the country, including the mountains and the sky, creating a feeling of claustrophobia. There is not even any spiritual support in this situation, as even religion has a hollow echo when people bow their heads in worship to the empty cisterns. It is as if people are becoming alienated from their past and any understanding of how they have come to be what they are.
This closing of the country also causes people to forget that they are alive and how they have in the past achieved the simplest of things, like building. This extends to people understanding how to relate to others (eg in marriage) and to have children. The evidence of what the Clashing Rocks are doing is provided by the images of the smashed wood and floating bodies from ships crushed by the rocks coming together.
In mythology the action of the rocks was destroyed by Jason, but in this pessimistic poem there is no sense of a hero who can bring the situation to an end. Nor is there any hero to rescue us in our situation either.
Our country is closed
Our country is closed, day and night,
everything: mountains that have cover,
The low sky.
We don’t have rivers, we don’t have
wells, we don’t have springs.
Just a few cisterns,
– even these are empty –
that echo when we bow to them.
A stagnant, hollow echo,
like our solitude,
like our love,
like our bodies.
It seems strange to us
that once we could build our homes,
shacks and sheepfolds.
And our weddings, cool
wedding crowns and rings
are becoming puzzles
inexplicable to our minds.
How were our children born, how did they grow strong?
We don’t have rivers, we don’t have
wells, we don’t have springs.
Just a few cisterns,
– even these are empty –
that echo when we bow to them.
Our country is closed.
Τwo black Clashing Rocks*
are closing it.
On the harbours on Sundays,
when we go down to take the air,
we see smashed wood lit up by the sunset,
from unfinished journeys,
and bodies that no longer know
how to love.
*Note: the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks), also known as the Cyanean Rocks, were, according to Greek mythology, a pair of rocks at the Bosphorus that clashed together randomly. They were defeated by Jason and the Argonauts, who would have been lost and killed by the rocks except for Phineus‘ advice. Jason let a dove fly between the rocks and it lost only its tail feathers. The Argonauts rowed mightily to get through and lost only part of the stern ornament. After that, the Symplegades stopped moving permanently. (Wikipedia)
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