Clay: 14

Yannis Ritsos

You enter and descend
into the darkness
then hear a cough.
It's nothing—he says.
And nearby, steps
begin to be heard
begin to exist.


Athens—January 17, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 86]

Clay: 13

Yannis Ritsos

Finding, not finding,
seeking a reason
for being here
he brushes his teeth
combs his hair
opens the window.
Only to misplace
his words
and his clothes.


Athens—January 17, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 86]

Clay: 12

Yannis Ritsos

This and that
were repeated.
Especially if lies were told.
Even death gets undermined.
In the next room
feet tapping the rhythm
of a music
that can't be heard.

Athens—January 17, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 85]

Clay: 11

Yannis Ritsos

Incredible—he said—
incredible—
and had fallen to his knees.
It rained.
The two bicycles were left
inexplicably
under the trees.

Athens—January 17, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 85]

Clay: 10

Yannis Ritsos

Physical encounter
down deep
on mute stones
in secret water
darkness
where they tangle
the eels
and reproduce.


Athens—January 17, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 84-85]

Clay: 9

Yannis Ritsos

Mud
always more mud.
Where can the river flow
with its muddy burden
dragging along
wigs of others
even your rubber boots.

Athens—January 16, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 84]

Clay: 8

Yannis Ritsos

Mind
when the curtain's closed
to move at least
to the center
covering with your back
the paper tree
and the dead.

Athens—January 16, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 84]

Clay: 7

Yannis Ritsos

The only thing deserved
wasn’t spoken.
We threw
plates pistols
shoes coins into the water—
they sank to the bottom.
And the bottom shined.

Athens—January 16, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 83]

Clay: 6

Yannis Ritsos

The shoes of the dead
in all sizes
you tried them all—
and all at a very good price.


Athens—January 16, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 83]

Clay: 5

Yannis Ritsos

A pale hand
pulls the nail
the mirror falls
the wall falls.
Tourists arrive
photographs are taken.


Athens—January 16, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 83]

Clay: 4

Yannis Ritsos

Worst of all:
they die
even the
poems—
the last sound ringing
in my black skull.


Athens—January 16, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 82]

Clay: 3

Yannis Ritsos

Black trunks
wet trees
fog.
Rifles of hunters
crashing rocks
a motorcycle.
How long will this weather last.
Far off, a red column
can be made out
perfectly.

Athens—January 15, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 82]

Clay: 2

Yannis Ritsos

Afterwards nothing.
The old man
pushes his wheelbarrow
full of lime
along the sea coast road.
He knows
the tree its repetitions
your story
and mine.
He looks at the ground.

Athens—January 15, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 81]

Clay: 1

Yannis Ritsos

Shadow—the same—
before and after glory.
We threw the crutches
into the sea.
Someone will find them
pick them up
and imitate us.
They will tell the truth.

Athens—January 15, 1978

from Clay (1980) [Collected Poems: IDelta ---pg 81]

Only the Stones Remain: a Preface to STONES

This book of poems, one of Ritsos’ numerous books of short poems, written in quick succession over a month or two, was written in 1968 during the poet's internment, because of his political convictions, at Partheni, a concentration camp on Leros, a prison island of stone.

Ritsos was arrested the morning of the military coup, April 27, 1967, nine days before his 58th birthday. Not heeding the advice of friends to flee, he had, instead, packed a suitcase and calmly waited for “those profound knocks upon the door” ('Announcements' pg. 6). At the end of April, he was transferred from a stadium in New Fáliron, a suburb of Athens, to the island of Yáros. Over 6,000 were brought to this island of bare stone. The prisoners suffered tremendously inhumane conditions having to live in tents and a few, long-abandoned buildings. Here, the exiles could look across the Aegean to the shores of Greece under the reign of the Colonels.
Demand from the International Red Cross, led to Ritsos being transferred to a concentration camp on the island of Leros in September, 1967. Here, in Partheni, he was allowed to write a poem or two in his notebooks each day. These poems are the poems in this book, Stones, as well as those of Repetitions (II) and a number of the long monologues of The Fourth Dimension.

Stones begins with a poem that may be an invocation of the muse. After which the poems grow increasingly severe, until in the poem ‘Midnight’ the guards attempt to detain night herself. Her smile at the end of this poem is a definite turning point, a breaking off point. The next poem in the book is written nearly a month and a half later, on August 27, 1968. It also has a smile, though of a quite different quality. He wrote two additional poems this same day. Then, again after much international pressure from artists and writers around the world, Ritsos was taken to a cancer clinic in Athens. After treatment, he was returned to the island, and added a final poem to the collection on October 21st.

The penultimate poem, written on the 27th of August, is a one line poem given the title of ‘Epilogue.’ Here Ritsos is unusually dark, equating life to “a wound in non-existence.” It seems likely he thought he would die on Leros.

The last poem, ‘Night’, coming after the poets treatment and placed at the end of this book of poems, is nothing less than shocking. An exclamation of hope and life, after facing mortality. We should not fail to notice that it is the natural world that greets the poet upon his return from the hospital, and that gives new meaning to the poet’s perception of freedom. He has returned as a member of nature’s “grand, ecstatic orphanage.”

In December, 1968, Ritsos left Leros. He took with him his poems as well as two large sacks filled with stones.

Scott King

Dissolution

Yannis Ritsos

Shapes dissolved, set in motion—a flood of uneasiness
and treacherous currents—the sound of water overtakes you
imponderable, deep, uncontrollable; you too are uncontrollable,
almost free.

Before long, inquisitive women arrived,

and certain old men also, with pitchers, tin cans, and pots
to gather water for their household chores. The water took on shape.
The river quieted down as it flowed away. Night came. Doors closed.
One woman remained outside in the garden, alone, without a pitcher,
moonlit water, transparent, a flower in her hair.

May 15, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Not To Be

Yannis Ritsos

Clouds on the mountain. Who or what is to blame? Silent and tired,
he looks forward, turns back, takes a step, bends over.
Stones lie below, birds above. A jar standing
in the window. Thorns in the open lands. Hands in pockets.
You plead and plead. The poem isn’t coming. Vacated.
The word needed to describe this must contain some emptiness.

May 15, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Omens

Yannis Ritsos

The statues were quickly hidden by weeds. We didn’t know
whether the statues had shrunk or whether the grasses had grown. Only
a large copper hand remained visible, like a terrible benediction,
above the tangle of unsightly shapes. Woodcutters
passed by on the road below—they never turned their heads.
Women no longer slept with their men. We could hear the night
dropping its apples into the river—one by one. And later on
the stars quietly sawing through that raised copper hand.

May 16, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Announcements

Yannis Ritsos

Undefined faces, lit by the reflection of a large mirror.
He listened to the sound of the door knocker. No one moved to answer it. The sound
went back out the windows into the night, until it encountered the one
knocking at the door. Then, as if he had fulfilled his mission,
this man grew quiet and moved toward the gate, dripping with dew.
He picked a flower and pinned it to his breast. “Fortunately,” he said,
“fortunately they didn’t answer the door.” For in truth no one was sought,
no one had sent him, and there was nothing for him to announce; only
those profound knocks upon the door, for everyone inside and for himself.

May 16, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

No, No

Yannis Ritsos

These beautiful heroic (slightly naive, it's true—though still beautiful)
immense white stones and hammers, and those being undressed
in the workshops (mostly muscular wrestlers, boxers)
in imitation of the deeds of others,—one arm raised emphatically,
legs apart in exaggerated balance. No, no—he said—
it’s not to be laughed at, and it goes far beyond sorrow;
that mangy dog, covered with ticks and scabs,
drinking dirty water out of the wash bucket
at the base of the half-finished statues of dead heroes.

May 17, 1968
Partheni concentration camp

note: this translation was originally published in the boxing anthology: Perfect In Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003).

from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Blockade

Yannis Ritsos

A peaceful sea with scarcely a flaw: faked light
coloring low clouds. If you don’t remember,
you won’t forget. The present—he says—but what present? There came,
at night, mute messengers who sat on the stone steps,
who took out cloth napkins and spread them on their knees,
and who, a little later, folded them back up and left. One
had a scar running from his temple to his chin. He stood
and pointed toward the sea, then cinched up his belt.
We lowered our lamps to the ground and watched our shadows
scramble up the white wall—enormous, hairy, without bones.

May 18, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Contentment

Yannis Ritsos

Not how there was nothing about prestige, about commendation, about the exemplary—
a sound of a key in the lock—just that sound in the night,
a thought about the shape of the key, about its simple mechanism,
and that secret meshing and obedience. Clearly it wasn’t
about prestige: if not, then what? Which quality should be singled out for praise?—
the unknown one that holds the key and the unknown door.
Perhaps only ego: when we hold that sound,
while, at the far end of the street, the old door-keeper makes his rounds completely naked
having covered his head with a white towel.

May 18, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Unanswered

Yannis Ritsos

Where are you taking me? Where does this road lead? Tell me.
I can’t see a thing. This isn’t a road at all. Only stones.
Black girders. A streetlight. If only I had
that cage—not the kind for birds, but rather one
with heavier wire, with naked statues. When
they cast the dead down from that flat roof, I didn’t say anything,
I gathered up those statues—I felt sorry for them. Now I know:
the last thing to die is the body. So speak to me.
Where are you taking me? I can’t see a thing. It’s best I don’t see.
The greatest obstacle to thinking through to the end, is glory.

May 19, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Suffocation

Yannis Ritsos

At the next table, tobacco sellers talked—
hairy hands, clouded drinking glasses. Flies
stuck in clusters on the paper. Beneath the serving window
a dropcloth with a tuft of hair. In the window
a soiled piece of sky, a cloud
held in place by five rusty nails.
“Child, child,” (it wasn’t even his own voice). An old woman
limped in the door; she winked knowingly—
in her bottom jaw, a large rotten tooth.
Then the door was heard being nailed up from the outside.

May 19, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Ripening

Yannis Ritsos

Doubtful—he says—vague, opaque; I can't make out the meaning.
The grass rustles. Old women, at the windows, shake large
black sheets. The milkman pisses on the threshold stone.
The cripple sharpens a knife. Flags are suddenly lowered
on the battleship. Large bass drums tumble
and roll down the hillside. Guards race out.
after a naked man with his head shaved. “He’s crazy,” they shout.
“Don’t listen to him! He's crazy.” The man runs. They chase after him.
“He beats copper pans all night.” The bayonets shine.
Women pull their dresses up to cover their eyes.
“Don’t listen to him!” And you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

May 19, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Hindsight

Yannis Ritsos

The way things turned out, nobody, we say, is to blame. One left;
another was killed; the others—how should you account for them now?
The seasons go about their business as usual. Oleanders bloom.
The shadow walks round and round the tree. The pitcher, left out,
motionless in the blazing sun, was scorched though it protected the water.
All the same, he said, we could have moved the pitcher each hour,
stayed in step with the shadow, round and round the tree,
circling until we caught the rhythm, dancing, forgetting
the pitcher, the water, even our thirst—no longer thirsting, just dancing.

May 20, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems: I ]

Nakedness

Yannis Ritsos

Lizards, large and small, in the cracks in the wall. Spiders,
heaps of spiders in the baskets of spent summer. He
could care less about the statues—not having become one.
His hands abandoned on bare knees. Fingernails,
hairs, the ring (what kind of ring?), all these seemed very strange.
Not having to hide anything, he has nothing to expose.

May 22, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems:I ]

Groundkeeping

Yannis Ritsos

Those ones beneath the trees stained by the sun, so very beautiful, seated
on covered furniture, on stools, on chairs, in front of the wire fence,
as for a parade, as though you were supposed to draw them—they play backgammon, they read and are quiet—they aren’t listening;
with that swath of blue-silver sea for a backdrop, they’re so beautiful
there’s no need for questions, for knowledge. At the far end of the avenue lined with trees,
a slender boy appears, a dirty towel over one shoulder,
bending over, collecting empty lemonade bottles, cloudy and hot in the sun.

May 22, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems:I ]

The Unacceptable

Yannis Ritsos

Gradually, he grew distant from us, as though somewhat sad,
and strangely calm, as though he had discovered
something large and incommunicable—a headless statue, a star, a truth,
the one and only truth. We asked him what it was.
He wouldn’t speak. As Though he knew we were neither capable
nor willing to learn. We, his friends,
cast the first stones. His enemies couldn’t have been happier. At the trial
they questioned and cross-examined him. Still not a word. The chairman
beat his gavel, shouted, growing more and more angry— “Quiet! Quiet!
Don’t listen to this silence from the accused.” The verdict was unanimous.
One by one we turned and placed our foreheads against the wall.

May 24, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems:I ]

Toward What?

Yannis Ritsos

With age he’s begun to speak bitterly (which is strange—you’d expect
better from one so dedicated, loyal, and obedient) never sure,
about faces and events—somewhat general and vague, awkward at any rate,
perhaps even somewhat frightened. His hands
twisting, like tree roots in a strange cavern,
some deep place, not unlike our own. No one
believes him any more; they won’t look him in the eyes—let him say whatever he wants.
Not that they feared what he feared—not at all. A window pane,
high up, on the fifth floor, gives off a gentle brilliance,
it lights up his face as though he put on a mask of glass. And we
lift our hands to our faces as if they could hide us
or become part of a wall. Bits of plaster,
stones, dirt, small copper coins fall from between our fingers;
we bend down to gather them—we’re not kneeling down before him.

And in the mirror, opposite, something white, boundlessly white—
an old ivory comb inside a glass of water,
and the calm glow of the water in the glass, in the mirror, in the air.

May 24, 1968
Partheni concentration camp


from Stones [Collected Poems:I ]