Kostis Palamas – Agora (The Market Place)

Just as dry summers pant for the first rain,

so thou art thirsty for a happy home

and for a life remote, like hermit’s prayer,

a corner of forgetting and of love.

–

And thirsty for the ship upon the sea

that ever onward sails with birds and sea-things,

filling its life with our great planet’s light.

But unto thee both ship and home said: ”No!

–

Look neither for the happiness remote

that never moves, nor for the life that ever finds

in each new land and harbor a new soul!

–

Only the panting of a toiling slave

for thee! Drag in the market place thy body’s

nakedness, strange to the strangers and thine own!”

From the poetry collection ”Life Immovable” (or ”The Motionless Life”), published in 1904. Translation by Aristides Phoutrides.