Poetic-Verses from ATHANASE
Divine Favor (English)
for Homère Békès
'...the hour of your doom is not yet come.'
Homer, Iliad VII, 52
From beside the ocean, flickering Shade of the past,
you come and approach my lips, where the great
carefree sky blue summer night
weaves the veil of its double splendour!
You, divine figure, there in my memory
like Tiresias in the land of the dead,
like true reality among the shadows!
You drown me in kisses
soft as the spirit of hyacinths,
and, trembling with emotion,
you relight the passion in my eyes
and give back with a silky delicacy
life to life!
You lean over me
smiling at time as if from before time,
and promise me that I will write poems yet more marvellous
than the learned elegies
of the sweetly singing Greeks!
Tell me, Shade, you who now inhabit
heaven's fixed spheres, that country of motionless stars,
you who come towards me through the sea of dreams,
and hasten my thoughts onto the roads
of sublime Poetry,
am I still in favour with the Muses?
O soul, who knows all things
before birth,
open my hands to
this last shuddering tenderness,
make the flowers of an unknown spring
bloom again in my pure blood!
Soul equal in immortality to the gods,
reassure me, soul,
tell me in words that only you know how to speak
that my destiny,
like that of Békès,
is not to die yet!
Grant me, my soul,
this double, this infinite
divine favour!
translated from the French of Athanase Vantchev de Thracy by Norton Hodges
27.09.06.
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Divine Favor (English)
Divine Favor (English)
