Poetic-Verses from ATHANASE
Aristotle (English)
for my father
'The terms "being" and "non-being" are employed firstly with reference to the categories, and secondly with reference to the potency or actuality of these or their non-potency or non-actuality, and thirdly in the sense of true and false.'
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 9, 10
You used to tell me, dear father,
that Beauty has its own dazzling motion
through itself and in itself
and that Truth is merely an attribution of thought!
You also said this, father you said that to be
is to be unified, to be as one
and that essence is primordial unity!
You loved great Aristotle,
that impassioned river of words and rare intelligence,
that insatiable soul who wanted for his home country
the whole world, from the motionless Earth
to the transparent Sphere
where the fixed stars move and shine!
Naive and adolescent, I drank in your sparkling words,
loving your sonorous copper voice,
like a vine loaded down with fruit.
The fabulous magnificent summer bent over us
making the robins, that vagabond people,
cry out with passion!
How far away you are tonight, father,
lost in the sonorous dust of the years!
I feel so alone without you, lost
among the ancient voices
that sing in my flesh and shape my breath!
O Love! Flood my eyes with your heavenly compassion,
unfold across my face
the invigorated freshness of July's wild greenery!
And you, my Saviour, my Healer! Let me drink the pure waters
of pure and secret books!
O Mysteries, what silence spies in me
is this living wound that words gouge,
this invisible something, the most precious of all things!
Come back, tonight, O child of emerald green,
bring forward the hour of the great night of the Gnomon
embellished with sweet wallflowers and scarabs of nephrite,
come back with eyes smiling
and your face illuminated by that flowing confidence
that makes the notes of the flautists of Khalkis shiver
when they arrive to celebrate the mystic rites dedicated
to the Immortal Mother Goddess!
What are we without the Gods
and their burning hopes?
translated from the French by Norton Hodges
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Aristotle (English)
Aristotle (English)
