Nikkos Kavadias (2)

"On est muté, on change de navire. Il faut apprendre les mouvements du nouveau ; chaque bateau a les siens. Un marin de cargos aura le mal de mer sur un paquebot. Etrange maladie : le seul remède est la terre ferme. Les sourds, ceux qui ont perdu l'odorat n'ont pas le mal de mer. Les fous non plus. Je me souviens d'un montagnard qui voyait la mer et y naviguait pour la première fois."

"Qui a entendu plainte plus humaine que celle de la cheminée qui fait l'amour avec la brume, ou que celle que l'on entend dans la tempête, sans qu'aucune main ait tiré le filin de la sirène ? Elle hurle toute seule en épousant le vent."

 "Deux yeux, l'un d'eux est vert. Une émeraude. L'autre rouge. Un rubis. On les appelle feux de position. Feux de route. Ce sont des yeux. Les navires, on ne les conduit pas. Ce sont eux qui nous conduisent."

no livro Le Quart.

Nikos Kavvadias

Fog (Pousi)

The fog fell with the evening
— the lightship lost —
and you arrived unexpected
in the pilot-house to see me.

You are wearing all white and you’re wet,
I’m plaiting your hair into ropes.
Down in the waters of Port Pegassu
It always rains this season.

The stoker is watching us
with both feet in the chains.
Never look at the antennas
in a storm; you’ll get dizzy.

The boatswain curses the weather
and Tokopilla is so far away.
Rather than fearing and waiting
better at the periscope and the torpedo.

Go! You deserve firm land.
You came to see me and yet see me you didn’t
I have, since midnight, drowned
a thousand miles beyond the Hebrides.

from here.

Kostas Ouranis

NOSTALGIAS
by Kostas Ouranis
Translated by Alex Moskios

  I resemble the old sailors that I saw in Holland,
With their wrinkled faces and skins like leather mitts,
Sitting by the tall and weather bitten lighthouses,
Looking in calm silence at the departing ships.

Their eyes that still held shipwrecks and hurricanes,
With yearning and nostalgia looked at each vessel's bow,
As they lifted their heavy and noisy anchors
And like giants by the lighthouses kept moving now

After a time, in the endless sea the ships were moving,
And disappeared in a porphyry sunset horizon, leaving
Behind smoky rivers that spanned the sky before expiring.

  And yet the old sailors kept sitting by the lighthouses,
With their dead now pipes still hanging from their lips,
Eyes fixed on the horizon of the long now departed ships.

from here.

um grego nascido e educado em istanbul então constantinopla, cônsul em lisboa.