CZESLAW MILOSZ – ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
Standing on the flagstones of the sidewalk at the entrance to Hades
Orpheus hunched in a gust of wind
That tore at his coat, tossed in the leaves of trees,
Heaved past in clumps of fag. With each new wave
The headlights of cars dimmed and flared.
He stopped at the glass-paneled door, uncertain
Whether he was strong enough for this ultimate trial.
He remembered what she had said to him: "You are a good man."
He did not quite believe it. Lyric poets
Usually have-as he knew-cold hearts.
It is like a medical condition. Perfection in art
Is given in exchange for such an affliction
Only her love bad warmed him, humanized him.
When he was with her, he thought differently about himself.
He could not fail her now, when she was dead.
He pushed through the door and found himself walking
in a labyrinth.
Corridors, elevators. The livid light was not light but the dark
of the earth.
Electronic dogs passed him noiselessly.
He descended many floors, a hundred, three hundred, down.
He was freezing, and understood that he was Nowhere.
Under thousands of frozen centuries,
On an ashy trace where generations bad moldered,
In a kingdom that seemed to have no bottom and no end.
Thronging shadows surrounded him.
He recognized same of the faces.
He felt the rhythm of his blood.
He felt strongly his life with its guilt
And he was afraid to meet those to whom he bad done harm.
But they bad lost the capacity to remember
And gave him only a flickering, indifferent glance.
For his defense he bad a seven-stringed lyre.
He carried in it the music of the earth, against the abyss
That buries all of sound in silence.
He submitted to the music, yielded
To the dictation of song, listening with fart attention,
Became, like his lyre, its instrument.
Thus he arrived at the palace of the rulers of that land.
Persephone, in her garden of withered pear and apple trees,
Black, with naked branches and verrucose twigs,
Listened from the funereal amethyst of her throne.
He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,
He sang of smoky mornings in the rosy-colored dawns,
Of colors, cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of the taste of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt,
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a flock of pelicans above a bar,
Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death,
Of his having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness
I don't know-said the goddess-whether you loved her or not.
But you have come here to rescue her
And she will be returned to you. There are, however, conditions.
You are not permitted to speak to her, or on the journey back
To turn your head even once to assure yourself that she is behind you.
And so Hermes brought forth Eurydice. Her face changed, utterly grey,
Her eyelids lowered, beneath them the shade of her lashes.
She stepped rigidly, directed by the hand
Of her guide. He wanted so much
To call her name, to wake her from that sleep.
But he refrained, for he had accepted the conditions.
And so they set out. He first, and then,
But not right away, the slap of the god's sandals
And the light patter of her feet tethered by the hem of her robe.
A steep climbing path phosphorized
Out of darkness like the walls of a tunnel.
He would stop and listen. But then
They stopped too, the echo faded.
And when he began to walk, the double tapping commenced again.
Sometimes it seemed closer, sometimes mate distant.
Under his faith a doubt sprang up
And entwined him like cold bindweed.
Unable to weep, he wept at the lass
Of the human hope for the resurrection of the dead.
He was, now, like every other mortal.
His lyre was silent and in his dream he was defenseless.
He knew he must have faith and he could not have faith.
And so he persisted, for what seemed a very long time,
Counting his steps in a half-wakeful torpor.
Day was breaking. He thought he could make out shapes of rock
Under the luminous eye of the exit from the underground.
It happened as he expected. He turned his head
And behind him on the path was no one.
Sun. And sky. And in the sky white clouds.
Only now everything cried in him: Eurydice!
How will I live without you, my consoling one!
But there was a fragrant scent of herbs, the law humming of bees,
And he fell asleep with his cheek pressed to the warm earth
.
Arvo12