Our Sun

This sun was mine and yours; we shared it.

Who's suffering behind the golden silk, who's dying?

A woman beating her dry breasts cried out; `Cowards,

they've taken my children and torn them to shreds, you've

killed them

gazing at the fire-flies at dusk with a strange look,

lost in blind thought.'

The blood was drying on a hand that a tree made green,

a warrior was asleep clutching the lance that cast light

against his side.

 

It was ours, this sun, we saw nothing behind the gold

embroidery

then the messengers came, dirty and breathless,

stuttering unintelligible words

twenty days and nights on the barren earth with thorns only

twenty days and nights feeling the bellies of the horses

bleering

and not a moment's break to drink rain-water.

You told them to rest first and then to speak, the light had

dazzled you.

They died saying `We don't have time', touching some rays

of the sun.

You'd forgotten that no one rests.

 

A woman howled `Cowards'. like a dog in the night.

Once she would have been beautiful like you

with the wet mouth, veins alive beneath the skin,

with love.

 

This sun is ours; you kept all of it, you wouldn't follow

me.

And it was then I found about those things behind the

gold and the silk:

we don't have time. The messengers were right.

 

Giorgos Seferis

Done