|
fire of st john « before . now . later » |
Permalink . Comment (8) |
 Our fate: spilled lead; our fate can’t change – nothing’s to be done. They spilled the lead in water under the stars, and may the fires burn. If you stand naked before a mirror at midnight you see, you see a man moving through the mirror’s depths the man destined to rule your body in loneliness and silence, the man of loneliness and silence and may the fires burn. At the hour when one day ends and the next has not begun at the hour when time is suspended you must find the man who then and now, from the very beginning, ruled your body you must look for him so that someone else at least will find him, after you are dead. It is the children who light the fires and cry out before the flames in the hot night (Was there ever a fire that some child did not light, O Herostratus*) and throw salt on the flames to make them crackle (How strangely the houses – crucibles for men – suddenly stare at us when the flame’s reflection caresses them). But you who knew the stone’s grace on the sea-whipped rock the evening when stillness fell heard from far off the human voice of loneliness and silence inside your body that night of St John when all the fires went out and you studied the ashes under the stars. (Giorgos Seferis) On the eve of the feast day of St John (24 June), it was customary in Seferis’ childhood village of Skala near the town of Vourla in Asia Minor – as in other Greek villages generally – for the children to light small fires in the streets after sunset and jump over them for good luck. FujiPro160S YashicaD Posted by alek on 07/06/2008 Archives: yashica-D, all, mediumformat |
|
 |  |  |  |  |
© enigma janitor