Voices of Hellas
I sat and mused, high above the sea In the heart of impregnable Monemvasia; Oh, beauteous was the sky of Laconia Mellow with sunlight, unutterably free, While canaries with sweet melodies Lulled my haunted spirit in the gentle breeze. As I closed my eyes to the setting sun, I heard the voices of warriors long gone: The clangour of battles lost and won By Saracen or Slav, Ottoman or Venetian Resounded yet across the years of eternity And tears flooded my soul with melancholy. Oh the strange hues I saw in the seas And skies of sea-clad Peloponnesus As Phobus' chariot of fire was about to ease Into the waters of nocturnal stillness. Fair, intoxicating landscapes of beauty But oh, how darkened by pain and misery! The blood of men has stained these walls With the indelible mark of abject infamy And writ large in letters of black tyranny Is the foe's eternal disgrace when he falls. Forever a symbol of proud resistance, Malvasia juts out a death-defying stance. Oh stranger who comes along these shores And brush past the walls of this old bastion, Walk ever so gently along the past's corridors With due reverence to all those Time has undone: Their fate is yours as well; the moni emvasis That led you in will lead you out into real bliss! Like all things in Spartan land, what you see Is just a semblance of reality: the ride is rough, The smile is scarce through centuries of tough Struggles against foes of unimaginable cruelty. But look inside the heart's inner chambers And there surely you'll find the soul's live embers Civilizations rise and crumble into dust And nation against nation keeps on fighting; Blood flows into blood, and daggers into rust But Monemvasia's walls are still standing. In the labyrinth of the mind, Morosini's name Lives on, closer to us than Palaeologos' fame. For one to have lived two score and ten And then alight on the ancient hill of Gythion Where a solitary soul in a remote den May lick his wounds like an injured lion, Oh, what a delight to lighten up the load! What sweet solace deep inside the gods' abode! From Nauplion's wind-swept and sad acropolis Through Monemvasia's epic delineations To Gythion's soft-lulling wave and kiss I let my heart throb with Hellenic emotions And everywhere I looked, wherever I went, The gods smiled at me, a sign of good portent! I know not if I'll ever see the shores of Hellas Again; nor if my eyes will once more rest Upon Fira's inviting slopes, or on Athena's Sacrosanct temple, but as time itself will attest, When my soul crosses over past Hades' gate It will head back to Morea, as decreed by Fate! Claudio Wye, October 2000
