Athens and a Girl

“perfectus vero cui mundus totus exilium est”

Hugh of St Victor, Didascalion III, 20

Gimcrack city,
Restless frenzy in the veins…
I want to go back to the village
Of a single comforting thought,
The sleepy snake village where, I think, I was born.

Panayiota, yours is the casting vote,
The fatal ostrakon, a sentence of exile.

In me are the tyrant and the democrat,
Twin brothers fighting hand to hand,
Kicking, biting and stabbing in the dust…

In the ruins of the Asklepieion,
Among the cypress trees, beneath the Acropolis,
I feel myself among the sick,
Bathing in the sacred spring,
Offering sacrifice at the altar,
Then retiring to the abaton
To sleep, and let dreams heal me.

Just beneath the Odeion archaeologists
Have dug up loutrophoroi,
“Such vessels were used in wedding ceremonies,
Then dedicated in the sanctuary…”
Satyrs dance around the altar of Dionysos Eleutherios,
Singing goat-songs in competition.

Pelasgian fantasies storm the Acropolis,
Where my blue-eyed wonder walks,
Escorted by perverse spirits;
My arrogance covets Tyrian purple
And Byzantine enthronement…
Shyly, the dull little murex shell
Conjures improbable splendour !
Centaurs gallop in among the Lapiths
To trample the feast and abduct their women…
The holy serpent stirs in the Erechtheion,
Lured by honey-cakes,
Athena’s olive tree sprouts again from ashes,
The sea of Erechtheïs sounds its waves
Beneath the temple floor…
What is it the Arrhephoroi are carrying
Down the secret stair and underground passage
To the sanctuary of Aphrodite ?
Thoughts flee like murderers and runaway slaves
To the Cave of the Furies, below the Areopagos,
Seeking asylum by Oedipus’s tomb…

Panayiota, kore, what offering do you grasp
In your hand, -a pomegranate, perhaps,
Or a dove ? And your unearthly smile,
What does it betoken ? I only know
That it stirs and disturbs me
Like a whisper, like an omen.

Amid the Agora ruins, I stand,
Seduced by dim mythistory,
Easily convincing myself
That on this very spot the State Prison stood,
And in this bare remnant of a cell
Proud Socrates downed the hemlock,
With one of those small flasks discovered here…
What drives this yearning and craving
To make history solid
And earth airy dreams ?
Avid as any medieval relic-hunter,
Questing for the foreskin of Christ,
I seize on fancies and farragos,
Naming them nails of the True Cross…

At the Tower of the Winds,
-Sundial, water-clock and weathervane
Of my indefatigable Muse,
Tekke of the dervish heart
-Icall upon the eight winds to blow:
Boreas, Kaikias, Apeliotes,
Euros, Notos, Zephyros, Skiron and Lips!
Climbing up through the Plaka wynds,
Isight the Acropolis North Slope,
Where ithyphallic initiates
Raised altars to chthonic gods;
At the west end, above the Klepsydra spring,
Four caves entice the eye,
One of them perhaps the Pythion,
Where Apollo’s acolytes would wait
And watch for the lightning-bolt from Mt Parnitha
To inaugurate the procession to Delphi.
There, too, is the Cave of Pan,
Where the cult was revived
After the god’s appearance to the courier Pheidipiddes,
On his way to seek Spartan aid against the Persians in 490 B.C.

On this site - thickets blossoming
With courting couples,
And glades where stray cats live,-
Stood Plato’s Academy :
Twelve sacred olive trees grew here,
A well-watered grove with shady walks
Where the students could wander in thought,
And running tracks for the athletes,
Begging the gods to enter their limbs.
To the altar of Prometheus
Torchbearers raced,the dead at their sides,
Shadows of the tide-turning moon.
And Plato,he must, I think,have knelt here,
Powerful as a centaur,
Sketching paradigms in the ground
With his chubby finger.

Mycenaean gold masks once placed over the faces of the dead,
Silver and gold ceremonial rhyta,
An ivory lyre from a tholos tomb,
These objects I place before you, Panayiota,
If only in imagination…
Have you , I wonder, seen the Eleusis relief
In the Archaeological Museum,
Demeter handing the ears of corn to Triptolemos,
Whose mission is to distribute them to mankind,
While Persephone crowns him with a garland ?
Shall I ever with words attain the perfect simplicity
Of any Cycladic Bronze Age pot,
Shaped around emptiness,
Hoarding the air’s secret rituals ?

Lykavittos, crystal cone of light,
I climb you by steep wooded paths,
Gazing towards the sea,
And out over the ramshackle city,
And towards the distant mountains.
Somewhere on the slopes below
Aristotle and his disciples
Wandered under the Lyceum’s colonnades,
Discussing all things under the sun
While young recruits drilled on the parade ground.