THE HANDSTAND

april 2005

OUR SUN
by George Seferis

The sun was mine and yours; we shared it.
Who's suffering behind the golden silk, who's dying?
A woman beating her dried breasts cried out: "Cowards,
they've taken my children and torn them to shreds, you've killed them
gazing at the fire-flies at dusk with a strange look.
lost in blind thought."
The blood was drying on a hand that a tree made green,
a warrior was asleep clutching the lance that flared against
his side.

It was ours, this sun, we saw nothing behind the gold
embroidery
then the messengers came, dirty and breathless
stuttering unintelligible words
twenty days and nights on the barren earth with thorns only
twenty days and nights feeling the bellies of the horses
bleeding

and not a moment's break to drink the rain water.
You told them to rest first and then to speak, the light had
blinded you
They died saying: "We con't have time," touching some
rays of the sun.
You'd forgotten that no one rests.

A woman howled "Cowards," like a dog in the night
Once she would have been beautiful like you
with wet mouth. veins alive beneath the skin. with love.

This sun was ours; you kept all of it, you didn't want to
follow me
And it was then I found out about those things behind the
gold and the silk:
we don't have the time. The messengers were right.

Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard


The Handstand is reduced in page numbers, but certainly not in relevance to the importance of texts I am sent by my correspondents. Thank you all for your faith in my not giving up, AND FOR THE INSISTENCE THAT I CONTINUE.... Jules,and Gilad.





GEORGE KENNAN: I tell you, the mind is like any of the other muscles in the body. Unless it's used, it declines. And the hard difficulty to overcome, in getting older, is to know in what degree you can tax your own powers and in what degree you mustn't try to tax them. In other words, , if you try to do too much, you make a fool of yourself. If you try to do too little, you stagnate and you go to pieces.

George Frost Kennan died in March,2005. 101 years of age. One of the most noble and sane men we have had living on this planet , but few and far between other media texts than the customary Obit.following the week of his death . This was a man, ofcourse, who told uncomfortable truths, a man we must forget as quickly as we can evidently. Well as editor of a recalcitrant internet magazine I do not care to forget him and there follows two pages,of obit., quotes,and his long essay on the environment. George Kennan may not rest in peace, we can suspect, seeing how the world is a mere tumbleweed in the hands of the financial "rulers" of our governments. There will be criticism that he invented the CIA, a political tool . His idea for its use was totally corrupted by USA Governments, but may those who know how to wield the truth as a weapon against lies, carry his pilgrimage for knowledge into the future.J.Braddell,Editor.