Poetic-Verses from ATHANASE
An Elevation on Beauty
To Arielle Sonnery de Fromental
« Smiling, eyelids sinuous,
Long-pleated dress, quietly tragic… »
Georges Seferis,
Notes for a Poem
The river of your hair the colour of spring irises,
the flowing handwriting of your blue sky smiles
and your voice of wheat, where time, once
drawn, sails from piety into lyricism.
O heart, reread the book of this eternity,
the incandescent power behind the eclogue of her movements,
and the elegiac grace of her words woven in blood
that tremble like a bird's wing in the amber of summer!
How could Seneca, Chrysippus, Cleanthes or Zeno pit reason
against beating temples, brushed by beauty?
What could Marcus Aurelius's poor flesh do once clawed by the brilliance
of her face purer than a glyph on the Parthenon?
My hand, caress the traces where her magnificence has strewn
The grace of snowdrops and heavenly ancolias!
Athanase Vantchev de Thracy
Translated from the French by Norton Hodges (English poet)
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An Elevation on Beauty
An Elevation on Beauty
