Yannis Ritsos:

A Selection from the Forties

The selection from Y annis Ritsos' petry that follows is not
so much reresentative as it is indicative. It is meant to point to
certain aesthetic tedecies and conceptual strctures that have
characterized Ritsos' work from the very beginning of his literary
activity until today. In that sense, least, the eight poes pub
lished here can be said to constitute 8 exemplary selection.
-The Editors
58 JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASORA
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Y annis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
MIDNIGHT
A great starry night showing its bear claws,
foreign footsteps stealing your sleep,
what is this shadow climbing on the ceiling
cutting the room in half?
Footsteps, a motorcycle, the triger's sound -
the lantern through the windowpanes,
the cockroaches in the soldiers' shoes and helets.
Wat's the u of the moon's compassion now?
Some have hidden in the trunks of the nigt,
some have entered the cofns and travel,
some have taken the cashier's kes and surrendered their earth,
and tis dog that forgot us barks again at the moon,
awaens the sentries at the distant watchtowers,
the frst explosion blows up the bridge,
then the doors creak, at the corer stands the squadron,
the stret lamps fall face down and the tain's whistling i heard
when all fve roads are closed by the bayonets.
Athens, October 1941
59
60
JOUNAL OF Mb.HELLENIC UULK
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Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
POSTPONED DECISION
Old winds have replaced u on te bare plains.
Everything is so old - and tis lamp lighting a faded seascape
and the bed's shadow falling obliquely on the foor
and the clothes thrown on the chair
- the dead man abandoned them down here.
And you, what are you seeking so persistently
extending your hands as if pulling the ropes of a ship gliding
.
into the unknown?
The wind encircles the lights of te city, torents the trees,
uproots the little grass around the telegraph poles -
large shadows pace on the cobblestones,
each man h a piece of ice in his heart,
te soldiers wrap themselves wit their jackets,
the guard's feet freeze at the watchtowers.
Well, you know it. Yet what's the use of knowing?
The matches got wet too - you can't light your cigarette.
Now the smoke
stands voiceless over the kiss that burned
like the smoke staying on the horizon above the ship that
vanished.
Wat signal fickers over the spread-out map
in the wooden barracs? Outside the rain
lashes at the desolate camp,
smothers tat bugle which had called the names one by one,
moistens the benches H the gardens. The children have no
place to sit.
61
62
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
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Y annis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
A bloodstained shoe in the street.
A foot stuck in the shoe.
Someone leps out of the window. What cold.
Yet if you brought the hand to the forehead -he said -
you'd have found te last window easily. And opposite you i
the mirror
with the thic sk over the lap that smokes.
You'd easily have made a hole in the night.
But perhaps dawn will reveal a new face
as the shutters will open noisily,
perhaps te dwn. The shining square on the foor.
The bed's headboard gilded. An ironed shirt.
And outside in te street a child crying out the frst Greek grapes.
Athens, Marh 1942
63
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
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Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties 65
from THE LAST ONE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE MA
They ran downhill in tor jackets, with old guns
without bread in their knapsacks without bullets.
Only with small angr rivers did they blocade the passages
behind them.
They had marched for months on unfamiliar stones
on the snow togeter with their olive groves and vineyards -
up there some left a leg a hand
some a big piece of their souls
c left one or more dead.
Then they retured with wounds and frostbites
they buried teir guns in the rocs, the snow, the hollows
of trees
. the ba, in between the roof and the ceiling, in the dark
warehouse
leading to the back of the night with a small oil lamp of
patience.
Te locked door creaed teeth gnash in the cold.
The snow melted. Big rivers came down in the night
along with bones, caps and tattered fags.
Te windows shut their eyes. The windowpanes didn't shine.
Lie blind men. They looked inward.
It rained hard those days. The river came dow
the roofs into the drainpipes and from the drainpipes into the
. .
streets
and from there into the sewers - and then you didn't kfow where.
A fresh ashen line of the unknown remained
in the city in the night even in sleep.
Outside 'the loced rooi in the common corridor
just ori top of the door planks, a dead man
standing always, leaned his back again5t the door,
bac to back - if you had
_
opentd he'd have collapsed.
66 JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DISPOR
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Y annis Ritsos: A Selection from the Fortie
s
No tougt of sleep anymore no thought of even turing on
your other side.
Many dr, dark steps - foreign steps in the street or the stairs
around a piece of silence or a piece of ice or death - you
didn't know -
around someting cold and round and indiferent. And a
small ball
here or there changed place, always closed and total
like quicksilver from the broken therometer on the foor.
Desolate villages, dried-up rivers in a ruthless dry $ er.
Bombed churches. A white wind whistled
like the mad cantor who sang wild hymns in the shooting
and the priest with the boots of the dead ofcer
.
raised his cassock and jumped over the fence. On te walls
the slogans were crossed out. Mufled cannon volleys far of,
low on the horizon the silence of the lost war. A dead horse
on the slope.
Te ice made the shoe stic to the stocking, the stoing to
the leg.
We'll retur - they said. Even without legs we'll return. Te
corfelds rustled weirdly as if they were tearing the papers
as if they were tearing our fags with our patriotic songs. Two
tin clouds
hung over the mountain like two braids of garlic beside te
freplace
in a bombed house. Let's hide this ligt
lest they take it from us - where shall we hide it - he said.
Te other D gazed at his fngerails. I was growing dark.
Tey came down do5e against the wall. Tey bent
took their shadows and covered themselves. Tey vanished.
Only their cigarettes, fa of, sometimes a red glow.
67
68 JOUAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
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Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
The snow melted rivers rushed down they left to.
Death walked in the mud the wheelbarrows in the mud.
On the fallen door of sU er they carried the dead.
Te cypress trees stood against the sky like rebels against te
wall.
Te sun burned. Te guitars of the gypsies
were flled with blood. They make no sound. Even the mud
dried up.
We spoke about a sunset behind the trees and the hills
about those orange clouds that don't let you end your day
without assuring you that somethin will remain. We spoke
about the roots beneath te roc. What can we say now?
A movement only with your desperate hand
to chase away a big :y from the dead man's forehead. How
can you unfold that old voice in te presence of Aprl and May
just as the peddlers used to unfold a silk foral oth
before the girls' eyes? It has faded, it's gone,
.
how can you unfold it before the eyes of te children who
have no bread
before te eyes of the mothers who wear nothing else but black,
blac, blac?
And yet they talked, asked questions. Tey even listened . to
their voices.
Te woman took of her shoe and looked at it. It had holes.
The sun bued the shadow of the tree in the street - the
rad steamed.
Soldiers fee run aim fall;
From the other side the oters run aim fall. Blood runs
on te snow through the mud into the earth. Big rivers
red rivers rush down from the mountains -you hear them in
the night.
You cn't stay outside or inside. Where O yu go?
69
70
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
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bv, 0 :0Q y0UoIQ 1942
Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
U the spring sprout lots of grass big red brawny fowers.
The e is red and fuf-it's good for pitcers and pots.
People look out the windows. What's happening?
Someone's diging a fowert with a bone
- a white, pure bone - it glows i the sun.
The cildren sit at the thresold. They don't read. The tink.
Don't open the door. Le the er be kocing.
Te moon is te helmet of the German soldier.
Bar yourself well - put thick paper on the windowpanes.
Only the dead are fee U cate in the streets - listen to
teir steps
in their shabby wor-out shoes wandering in te rain
without fnding sleep or a grave these days, without fnding
a bit of land of their own a bit of bread a tiny meor.
Big searclights punc the wals, search the grooves of the
couds
frears snort beind the stone wall of te bric factory
the dogs dig the e dug up by mortars and graves.
Athens, July-August 1942
71
72
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
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1946-1947
Y annis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
WOMN
Women are very distant. Teir sheets smell of goodnight.
Tey put bread on te table so that we won't notice they're
missing.
Ten we relize we're wrong. We get up from the chair and say:
"You were very tired today," or "here, I'l light the lamp."
When we light the match, she turs gently, going
toward the kitchen with an inexplicable devotion. Her bac
is a sad little mountain loaded with many dead -
the family dead, her own dead and your own.
You hear her footsteps creaking on te old planks
you hear. the dishes crying in the cupboard and then
the train is heard taking the soldiers to the front lines.
1946-1947
73
74
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASORA
AnorEYMA
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1946-1947
Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
AFTRON
Te afternoon is all fallen plaster, blac stones, dried thor.
The afteron has a difcult color made of old footsteps left
halfway
made of old buried jugs i the yard, and on them tiredness
and gras.
Two dead men, fve dead men, twelve -how many, how many.
Each hour has its dead. Behind the windows
stand those missing and the pitcher with the water they didn't
drink.
And that star that fell at the edge of the night
is like the cut of ear that doesn't her the crickets
that doesn't hear our excuses - doesn't deign
to hear our songs - alone, alone,
alone, cut of, indiferent to condemnation or justifcation.
196-197
75
76
JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
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1949
Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
RCOGNITION
A stone sun traveled beside us
buring the wind and the thors of the wilderness.
The afteroon stood at the edge of the sea
like a yellow ligtbulb in a big forest of memory.
We had no time for such things - but, in any case,
sometimes we cast a glance - and on our blankets
along with the spots, the dirt, the olive pits,
there were some leaves left from the willows, some pine needles.
The had their weight too - not very much -
te shadow of a pitchfork on the stone wall, late at sunset,
the passing of the horse at midnight,
a rose color dying on the water
leaving silence behind even lonelier,
the moon's leaves fallen amid the reeds and wild ducks.
We don't have time-we don't,
when the doors become like folded hands
when the road becomes like the man who says "I know
nothing."
Yet we knew that fr of at the big crossroads
there's a city with thousands of multicolored lights,
men greet each other there with only a movement of the
forehead
we know them from the position of their hands,
fro the way they cut the bread,
from their shadow on the dinner table,
the hour when all the voices are drowsy
and a big star marks their pillows with a cross.
We kow tem from te strggle's furrow between their
.
eyebrows
and above all -i the nights, when the sky grows larger above
them
we recognize them from tat conspiratorial movement
as they throw their hearts like an illegal proclamation
under the closed door of the world,
1949
77
78
JOURNAL OF TH HELLENIC DISPOR
01 PIZE TOY KODOY
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1949
Yannis Rtsos: A Selection from the Forties
THE ROOTS OF THE WORLD
Some parched boxood shrubs H the su er's armpit,
some sage, thme, fm.
We were very thirsty.
We were very hungry.
We sufered a lot.
We would never have believed
that men would be so cruel.
We would neer have believed
that our hearts had such fortitude.
With 8 piece of death in our pockets - unshaven.
Where is there 8 stalk of wheat to bend its knee to te sk?
It grows dark late. Te shadow doesn't hide te stone's
hardness.
Te dead man's canteen buried in the sand.
Te moon moored at another beach
while te stillness rolls it along with its litle fnger -
on which sea? Wic stillness ?
We were ver tirst,
working the stone al day long.
Beneath our thirst
are te D M of te world.
1949
79
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JOUA OF T HELLENIC DISPOR
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v9GtG8tde OUvot'ec. G0Gv8tIQ Gg8QqoiO"8c Iv aVGowv.
Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
from THE NEIGHBORHOODS OF THE WORLD
This su er, like last year's, came to us angry.
The sun's bag is heavy on te wounded back.
And from behind the leaves the frits show their clenched fists.
You don't even know whic mont it is.
No one ploughed this year, no one sowed.
You don't even kow how the weather i.
Summer has lost its way amid the dead
and the Seasons sit speechless in the bombed forest.
An open car in the morning road.
It carries into the city cases with bullets.
It tured. Vanished in the dusty light. No, you don't know ...
Te neighborhoods remember. Te neighborhoods
do not want to forget. At daybreak
te salvos at Skopeftirio. At night
te lights at Haidari. The blacout.
Te kiss was bitter and hasty.
Then the hands fell to the side.
A pistol shot in. the street. The night. And the feeing.
The night. And te heart pounding strongly
just as a fst pounds on the table.
Ten silence again. Only
the moon's crutches on the sidewalk
and a hand casping the back of the cair
and a hand oiling the old revolver
.
and a hand sewing a fag
.
and a hand claping another hand
and the stars showing their clenced teeth
over the swatika futtering on the Acropolis,
and the wind starting at midnight.
Ah, how this wind blows. I doesn't want to stop.
Closes and opens the doors. Pounds at the shutters.
Dishevels the neighborhoods. Torments the mothers' blac
skirts.
81
82 JOUAL OF THE HELLENIC DISPOR
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x! cokeodzv "tt zoyeoov.
Y annis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
Ah, this wind does not want to stop.
It blows, blows, blows,
stirs up the voices and pages of History,
strips up the sparks from the fres of the world,
shakes violently a big forest of hopes,
83
tears the fags of the Ministries,
for a moment stops to tie its shoelaces behind the singed stone wall
and fees, fees. For years now
and it hasn't stopped yet. Strides over
the windows of the burned houses.
Wears the boots of the dead.
Its footsteps are heard on the asphalt,
are heard on the bare plain sown with bones,
are heard on the high mountain with te skulls ad te crows,
are heard in the trenches and the night camps,
and when the bugles at the camps sound taps
te footsteps are heard even clearer.
This way the tanks - this way, tis way. Wa does he point at
with that outstretced fnger - policeman #44 -
ordering death with te boots -ordering death
outside Atens, outside Greece, outside the world -
what does that outstretched fnger point at high up?
Te lowering of the swastika on the Acropolis,
there's the Greek fag hoisted
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.
Freedom or death
freedom or death - te people
in the open cars shouting - and the leafets
and te people chaing te leafets and shouting hurrah
stumbling over the tanks and shouting hurrah
hurrah, hurrah, hurrah,
freedom or death, freedom or death - the people
in the open cars shouting
freedom or death, freedom or death
the people who fought and fell
who fell and smiled
who kissed the people and smiled
who pulled te wedged bullet out of their chests with teir fingers
and came bac among us and fought
and fought and smiled.
84 JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA
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Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
Freedom or Death, Freedom or Deat, Freedom or Death
this wind souting with al its lungs
85
and Tea Kali with the megaphone in the convertible with other
neighborhood women
Thea K shouting with a megaphone: "Vangeli, Vangeli, V angeli,
today your moter sees the whole world Vangeli"
Tea Kali without her black scarf
and Kyra Leni beside her fluttering her two hands like two big doves
Kyra Leni amid her three children,
Kyra Leni sming again amid the people
on October 12, 194. *
It was cold. December was drawing near, you see. We hastened
We had to gather data. To omplete the lists of our martrs
we had to make the new bases for the organization.
We had to write our songs. We didn't have time then.
How could one catch up? What could one catc up with first?
I the nights
when the stores' shutters are lowered over the show windows
with the tired lights
just as iron nets are lowered into mythical depths - in the nights
lots of trafc is noticed from English jeeps
lots of trafc by some big, closed, silent cars.
The bars lit up, English soldiers
drink beer, appear at the doors
in the ligted squares one sees the throwing up
they come out on te sidewalks and piss. Tese soldiers, here,
as if they were, tey say, at home. What home of theirs?
These soldiers reel, drunken, stumble, shout, sing
as i they had pebbles on their tongues. What are tey singing for?
A, this wind does not want to stop,
it blows, blows, blows,
shakes the hearts and the fags
brings down the tiles of sleep
its hammering echoes in the night -
it nails a huge cofn,
it makes a cradle the wind, te wind .
beat after beat. How long will they crucify the light on the doors?
How long will you be able to remain silent? How far will the
knife reac?
* Te date on whic Atens was liberated from the Germans.
86 JOURNAL LI THE HELLENIC DIASPOR
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Yannis Ritsos: A Selection from the Forties
You try to take the trowel to patch the bullet wounds
and they take both the trowel and the hand from you,
you try to sow a handful of grain in the mutilated feld
they take from you bot the feld and the grain,
you try to smile at the sunset
they t from you both the sun and your face. Where can
you moor?
Tey steal from you the smile, te steal even your tears. Where
will love stay?
A bayonet gleams in front of the bread
a bayone pierces the child in the mother's belly. Let u
let u join our hands,
let tis wind dry our eyes.
Our cildren sleep under the mountains,
- let u weep for our children,
let them hear the crackling of the seeds - that's why they fl
so that bread won't be missing from the tale,
so that te root of the smile will not die in our hearts. Tis wind
keeps their blood and their voice. Let u.
Tis wind is big
it is huge this wind
it is joyful, joyful, joyful,
knocks down the walls raised beteen the peoples
knocs down the walls of death
knos dow te walls beteen the mind and the heart
the walls between you and me
and opens wide over the one world, the sun's window.
Listen how this wind whistles
in the bloodstained neighborhoods of the world.
Makronisos, Ai-Stratis, 1949-1951
translated from the Greek by Athan Ana
g
nostopoulos
87