Daily Poem: Greece ~ Gunnar Ekelöf

February 23, 2017 | Filed Under Poem for Hela | No Comments

Greece
~ Gunnar Ekelöf
Translated from the Swedish by Leonard Nathan and James Larson

O whitewashed chapel

with icons worn out by kisses!

Your door is shut

only with a spike and a twist of wool

such as one gathers among thistles

and twines around the finger

The oil cruse stands ready

and the greasy lamp, and the plate

for him who has a penny

for him who hs matches

Old and new icons

a gift of mothers

— occasions have not been wanting —

for him who was left in the pass

for him who was taken as a janissary

for him whose eyesight was emptied

for him who was lost with Markos —

cheap prints under glass

Big as a sheepcote:

Your bells the sheepbells

tinkling somewhere up in the mountains

chapel whose lock is wool.

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