Midday Summer Dream: 19

Yannis Ritsos

HOW LOUD the birds are when they talk in their sleep.

They're like children who cry out all night long deliriously their songs as though they were reciting them for an exam.

We can't sleep, we hear our songs like bees buzzing around the chamomile of the stars and around our hearts.

The grown ups say we are lazy.

But we know about work—we stay awake until dawn working the large blue field so we wouldn't have to miss the sun's garden over the garden's of men.

Even though they call us lazy, we know about fatigue, we know what it is to plow, from the beginning, the largest field that each day the nettles overgrow.

We know how very tired the small gold hands of the sun beams can get, building those joyous cities of flowers, with the open balconies of the roses, with the lofty bell towers of the lilies.

Others see only sun beams and flowers.

They don't know about our kind of fatigue or our tears.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 350]

Midday Summer Dream: 18

Yannis Ritsos

WHEN PANAGIA passed silently under the trees, no one heard her.

The dogs didn't bark in the courtyard.

Only crickets greeted her, and a large star struck like a chord of some unknown song that the children only heard in their sleep and turned from one side to the other smiling.

Today in the fields, small golden lilies came up and the shepherds who found them kneeled and prayed.

It's true, the old blind man's sight returned, and the crippled walked, and before the eyes that have shed so many tears and looked night directly in the face, a small almond tree burst into bloom.

And that same night their sleep became a swallow's nest built under the brace of an old church bell.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 349-350]

Midday Summer Dream: 17

Yannis Ritsos

17. THE EARTH was watered with light. You can't tell the light and the earth apart.

We are our dreams.

The windows opened and the flowers marched in like a cheerful army with red drums and golden trumpets, coming back from yesterday's garden to today's kindness.

The fence was so covered in green, you could no longer see that it was a fence.

In Spring's blond braids small blue lilies sprang up.

And as much as they cried the day before yesterday, they remembered today that they're still young and they laugh because they cried.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 349]

Midday Summer Dream: 16

Yannis Ritsos

MOTHER, don't be angry with us for not wanting to stay in the house.

The sun calls us out.

We'll dress you in a dress of roses knit by Spring herself using the tiniest beams of light for for needles beneath the almond trees. We'll set you in front of a mirror so you can look, laugh and get to know us.

Then little swallows will perch on your fingers, but still you won't laugh at this.

Mother, how can we roll away the stone blocking your door?

And yet, in the panes of our windows shines the painted face of dawn and all around like a frame the blossoming apple trees on the mountainside.

We jump out the windows.

The sky blossoms inside us smiling and wherever we stand we stand in all places.

Mother, why be so bitter, let's go into the garden so we can teach you to spell from our lesson books the alphabet of the sun and little by little you'll learn to read the flowers.

We'll toss you onto the back of a wild goose and your dress will flutter in the air like a banner high above the green fields.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 348-349]

Midday Summer Dream: 15

Yannis Ritsos

WE DON'T love, at this time, the books with their verses like slim monks.

We do not love our distant cousins that arrive from the capitol and wear double vests and who always have colds.

We walk without shoes on the hot ground, undress beneath the plane trees and wrestle, we play war throwing stones, we release kites and bathe in the river together with the blackbirds and the partridges.

We have hidden a bumble bee in our school bag and listened to it buzz during arithmetic.

We hardly remain in the house an instant.

We go out to the fields and check our traps.

Upon the threshing floor the haystacks shine like naked breasts and the horses race at midday, trampling the ears of grain and getting lost in the woods.

When evening comes, the horses return to the farmyard tame and the lazy tortoises pick daisies in the silent fields.

The hour smells of sweat and retsina as the evening smoke rises over the roofs and we stayed on the road a while gathering stars to show our mother that we also did something and that their concern about our day was not in vain.

Still the grownups don't know what we look at , they don't know our harvest nor are they able to eat of our wheat.

Nevertheless we caress our mother's tired hands all the while watching, far off, the Great Bear in its golden pelt.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 347-348]

Midday Summer Dream: 14

Yannis Ritsos

THE GIRLS lather the sun's head, and he curses like a spoiled boy when they thrust his head into the wash basin in order to rinse it.

Thousands of soap bubbles rise into the air, like tiny rainbows above the horizon of a spellbound butterfly.

The pigeons chase after the bubbles.

The light gestures, scolding the just waking swallows.

It's amazing the grownups remain asleep with so much racket.

We'll thrust a cicada under grandfather's nostril so he can smell our same spring and the end of his cane will bloom like a miniature cherry tree.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 347]

Midday Summer Dream: 13

Yannis Ritsos

WE WILL use the globe, the one the teacher uses to teach geography, as a ball and roll it through the green countryside in the chamomile.

At night we climbed to the village cemetery and secretly looked for skulls, filling them with grasses and flowers.

In the empty eye sockets we placed two roses.

Now everything is bright and colorful.

Even if it wasn't summer according to the calendar, we knew it would soon be here.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 347]

Midday Summer Dream: 12

Yannis Ritsos

THE WORLD is filled with flowers and birds.

Their light-hearted voices ring through the countryside.

Bells on the necks of donkeys.

Bells on the ears of the sun.

Bells on the points of leaves.

Bells on the braided hair of girls.

All dance in the light and ring.

Grandfather comes out into the sunshine and weaves out of green branches small baskets used to gather berries and pigeon eggs.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 346-347]

Midday Summer Dream: 11

Yannis Ritsos

TODAY a young girl sang from the top of a poplar tree, sea ribbons in her hair.

Out of her song flew small birds, filling the courtyards and covering the roofs.

The birds sat on the shoulders of children.

Grownups, getting tangled in the sun's nets, staggered like hatchlings.

Roses went crazy, doing somersaults in the water.

O Christ, what drunken light, breaking on the window pane, flooding the rooms, not leaving a single shadow for mother to shade her eyes.

So she'll wave her handkerchief in the air and dance the dance she danced when she and father were young— an island dance with the scent of the sea and boats loaded with oranges.

Father will pretend to have forgotten the steps and smile as he strikes his heel in the air.

And we — children, birds, flowers and stones — will follow after them dancing, as far as the threshing floor of the sun, singing of those never-fading days when grownups danced with their children, the same dance every spring.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 346]

Midday Summer Dream: 10

Yannis Ritsos

O CHRIST, why do you wear that long mournful dress and those thorns on your head? Wouldn't flowers be better?

Were you worried the door to heaven wouldn't open if you put poppies in your messed up hair?

Don't laugh because I have a bandage on my head.

I fell into the bushes the day before yesterday chasing butterflies.

Come, let's go to the field hand in hand like children and I will teach you to play the flute.

They wouldn't look good on you, those wrinkles on mother's face when she sets down her work for a moment and watches the new moon through the window.

Let's go cut your sorrowful hair. We'll use the large shears they use on sheep.

You'll see, God will love us. He'll let us sit at his feet. And He'll smile sweetly as we place daisies in his long mustache.

And when it gets dark, we'll hitch crickets to his tiny carriage and we will ride through paradise while the angels light the stars that shine down upon all the other children remaining below.

from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 345-346]

Midday Summer Dream: 9

Yannis Ritsos

TONIGHT we fall asleep in Spring's lap, resting our head against her heart.

We hear heartbeats and birds breathing in our sleep.

In the morning, when we wake, we see the sky strolling about our room like a bird of blue with golden eyes feeding on leftover bread crumbs of shadow.

Then, in a flash, we wash and get ready for the day.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 345]

Midday Summer Dream: 8

Yannis Ritsos

AT NIGHT the almond trees pass beneath our windows slow and sad in their white dresses, like those pale girls from the orphanage returning from a short, Sunday outing, nearly asleep, holding hands two by two, not speaking, not looking up to the stars sprouting one by one in the shadows, distant and happily.

Tomorrow we'll tell the almond trees to go to the beach and wash the dust of our sadness from their faces.

In the evening, when they return cheerful, they'll give us our first words washed clean in the sea, and we'll cry in the open windows for the joy of being able to cry.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 344]

Midday Summer Dream: 7

Yannis Ritsos

WE SLEPT when we weren't tired. We ate when we weren't hungry.

We kept time using the wristwatch given to us on our name day, forgetting the clock of the garden that always pointed to summer.

Now we want to place the wristwatch close to our pulse, checking the time when the hour hands of shadow begin to point across the golden green face of the lawn.

There's still time for us to cut some poppies so our hands won't grow old within the monasteries of books.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 344]

Midday Summer Dream: 6

Yannis Ritsos

LIKE the heart of a tiny swallow that trembles in the palm of daybreak your memory begins along with the first green leaf.

You remember how you sat and stared into the large round eyes of grazing cows, seeing a miniature rural landscape: the plain like a vast green tray, the small church with cypresses, the white arc of doves over the forest, the harvesters with bundles of wheat and with yellow handkerchiefs.

You didn't know the architecture of the roses, nor the mechanics that birds used to traverse the sky.

You simply said good morning to the roses and to the birds, as you might say good morning to girls.

Then daisies opened small windows and leaned out over the sills to greet the morning as it passed down the street without the burdens of shadow and memory.

Later on, you learned to greet people by taking off your hat, and to say "Thank you" to the flowers only when there was no one around to hear you.

You wished to grow up quickly, to put on long pants, to learn to write so you could stop saying "Thank you," to construct a rose where a sad ray of light sleeps in an empty arch of fragrance.

Now you ask to deliver once more over the same lip that same "Thank you" after so many years of forgetting it.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 343-344]

Midday Summer Dream: 5

Yannis Ritsos

WE HAD made a cart out of a walnut shell. We used a spool for wheels. We harnessed up two ants and heaped it full of clover. Please don't tell anyone where we are going.

The echo in the well listens and the caves repeat the sound our voices.

The sun burns the stone and a number of smokestacks send up plumes from the white cities of chamomile.

Wagtails steal our straw hats and wear them.

Now seated on the highest balcony of our mulberry tree they make fun of us. And we make fun of the wagtails.

We enter the whitewashed pen that is filled with weeds and a wooden cross, and we look for wild violets to braid into a crown for the girls' hair.

The road from here to there is straight, and the mule drivers sing grape harvesting songs under the immense midday heat of the sun.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 343]

Midday Summer Dream: 4

Yannis Ritsos

BRING OUT the wooden pony with the red saddle, we'll pursue the shadows of waters before evening catches up with us with its long fairy tales and wintry fires.

Time doesn't apply when the sun hangs gold fringes on the doors of the forest.

Bushes take their green aprons off and bathe secretly in the river.

Afternoons, when the grownups slept, the children left the houses, rolled in the grass, bit the chaste-tree leaves and embraced the trees.

Everywhere, the woods was scented by naked women.

Large butterflies revealed the secrets of spring and lizards with emerald eyes eavesdropped strangely from behind the stones throughout the night.

We didn't notice the fences.

We prayed later that the jackdaws wouldn't say anything to our mothers about what happened among the resin-dripping trees.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 342-343]

Midday Summer Dream: 3

Yannis Ritsos

NOBODY knew that we whispered in the ear of a butterfly.

Nobody remembers how it spoke to the dawn or that the flowers knew its voice or that the birds raised banners and trumpets and marched past like toy soldiers upon the road of morning light.

We almost remember when spring opens the windows and rustles the sheets of sleep with light.

The sea appears from somewhere.

Even the field draws closer like a green tortoise just waking.

Later the field goes back to being a field, and we the children that play in the field.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 342]

Midday Summer Dream: 2

Yannis Ritsos

LAST NIGHT the children didn't sleep at all. They had placed a number of cicadas in their pencil box, and the cicadas sang from beneath their pillows a song the children knew from long ago but that was forgotten each morning.

Golden frogs, sitting up on their toes and not noticing their shadows on the water, were like tiny statues of solitude and tranquility.

Then the moon tripped on a willow tree and fell into the thick grass.

A great flurry of leaves flew up.

The children ran and picked up the moon in their round hands and all night they played in the fields.

Now their hands are golden, their feet golden, and wherever they step they imprint small moons in the moist soil.

But lucky for them most of the grown ups didn't suspect a thing.

Only mothers were a bit suspicious.

So the children hid their hands, their golden hands, in empty pockets to avoid being scolded by their mothers for secretly playing with the moon all night long.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 341-342]

Midday Summer Dream: 1

Yannis Ritsos

WE RODE the wings of swallows gathering flowers from the sky.

For us the summer wind had no secrets, as we walked barefooted on the grass and spoke to cicadas in the language of sun.

The fire burned completely and became fire again.

We wove flower rings and pretended to marry trees, the air, the first silence.

Every pebble knew us just as we knew ever star that slept in water.

At night, the acacia trees passed by outside outside our windows, they reached across our open windowsill and left a flowering branch in a glass.

We drew the cheerful god of the vineyards back to the large green fields, his beard dripping juice, his feet like those of the goat, and his glance like that of Christ, compassionate and kind.

Yesterday and the day before that, all night, we tried to count the stars.

The stars are so numerous, as numerous our hearts, only our hearts are even more numerous than the stars.


from Midday Summer Dream (1938) [Collected Poems: Alpha ---pg 341]