BOLIVÁR

A Greek Poem

        THEY SAW AN APPARITION OF THESEUS IN ARMS, RUSHING
        ON AT THE HEAD OF THEM AGAINST THE BARBARIANS

Le cuer d’un home vaut tout l’or d’un pais

For the great, the free, the brave, the strong,
The fitting words are great and free and brave and strong,
For them, the total subjection of every element, silence, for
    them tears, for them beacons, and olive branches, and
    the lanterns
That bob up and down with the swaying of the ships and scrawl
    on the harbours’ dark horizons,
For them are the empty barrels piled up in the narrowest lane,
    again of the harbor,
For them the coils of white rope, the chains, the anchors, the
    other manometers,
Amidst the irritating smell of petroleum,
That they might fit out a ship, put to sea and depart,
Like a tram setting off, empty and ablaze with light, in the
    nocturnal serenity of the gardens,
With one purpose behind the voyage: ad astra.


For them I’ll speak fine words, dictated to me by Inspiration’s
    Muse,
As she nestled deep in my mind full of emotion
For the figures, austere and magnificent, of Odysseus
    Androutsos and Simon Bolivár.


But for now I’ll sing only of Simon, leaving the other for an
    appropriate time,
Leaving him that I might dedicate, when the time comes,
    perhaps the finest song that I’ve ever sung,
Perhaps the finest song that’s ever been sung in the whole
    world.
And this not for what they both were for their countries, their
    nations, their people, and other such like that fail to
    inspire,
But because they remained throughout the ages, both of them,
    alone always, and free, great, brave and strong.


And shall I now despair that to this very day no one has
    understood, has wanted, has been able to understand
    what I say?
Shall the fate then be the same for what I say now of Bolivar,
    that I’ll say tomorrow of Androutsos?
Besides, it’s no easy thing for figures of the importance of
    Androutsos and Bolivar to be so quickly understood,
Symbols of a like.
But let’s move on quickly: for Heaven’s sake, no emotion,
    exaggeration or despair.
Of no concern, my voice was destined for the ages alone.
(In the future, the near, the distant, in years to come, a few,
    many, perhaps from the day after tomorrow or the day
    after that,
Until the time that, empty and useless and dead, the Earth
    begins to drift in the firmament,
The young, with mathematical precision, will awake in their  
    beds on wild nights,
Moistening their pillows with tears, wondering at who I was,
    reflecting
That once I existed, what words I said, what songs I sang.
And the gigantic waves that every evening break on Hydra’s
    seven shores,
And the savage rocks, and the high mountain that brings down
    the blizzards,
Will eternally and untiringly thunder my name.)

But let’s get back to Simon Bolivár.

Bolivár! A name of metal and wood, you were a flower in
    the gardens of South America.
You had all the gentleness of flowers in your heart, in your
    hair, in your gaze.
Your hand was huge like your heart, and scattered both good
    and evil.
You swept through the mountains and the stars trembled, you
    came down to the plains, with your gold finery, your
    epaulets, all the insignia of your rank,
With a rifle hanging on your shoulder, with chest bared, with
    your body covered in wounds,
And stark naked you sat on a low rock, at the sea’s edge,
And they came and painted you in the ways of Indian braves,
With wash, half white, half blue, so you’d appear like a lonely
    chapel on one of Attica’s shores,
Like a church in the districts of Tatavla, like a palace in a
    deserted Macedonian town.


Bolivár! You were reality, and you are, even now, you are
    no dream.
When the wild hunters nail the wild eagles, and the other wild
    birds and animals,
Over their wooden doors in the wild forests,
You live again, and shout, and grieve,
And you are yourself the hammer, nail and eagle.


If on the isles of coral, winds blow and the empty fishing boats
    overturn,
And the parrots are a riot of voices when the day ends and
    the gardens grow quiet drowned in humidity,
And in the tall trees the crows perch,
Consider, beside the waves, the iron tables of the cafeneion,
How the damp eats at them in the gloom, and far off the light
    that flashes on, off, on again, turning back and forth.
And day breaks – what frightful anguish – after a night without
    sleep,
And the water reveals nothing of its secrets. Such is life.
And the sun comes, and the houses on the wharf, with their
    island-style arches,
Painted pink, and green, with white sills (Naxos, Chios),
How they live! How they shine like translucent fairies! Such is
    Bolivár!


Bolivár! I cry out your name, reclining on the peak of
    Mount Ere,
The highest peak on the isle of Hydra.
From here the view, enchanting, extends as far as the Saronic
    isles, Thebes,
Beyond Monemvasia, far below, to august Egypt,
And as far as Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti,
    San Domingo, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela,
    Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uraguay, Paraguay, Ecuador,
As far even as Mexico.
With hard stone I carve your name in rock, that afterwards men
    may come in pilgrimage.
As I carve sparks fly – such, they say, was Bolivár – and I
    watch my hand as it writes, gleaming in the sun.


You saw the light for the first time in Caracas. Your light,
Bolivár, for before you came the whole of South America
    was plunged in bitter darkness.
Now your name is a blazing torch, lighting America, North and
    South, and all the world!
The Amazon and Orinoco rivers spring from your eyes.
The high mountains are rooted in your breast,
The Andes range is your backbone.
On the crown of your head, brave palikar, run unbroken
    stallions and wild cattle,
The wealth of Argentina.
On your belly sprawl vast coffee plantations.


When you speak, terrible earthquakes spread devastation,
From Patagonia’s formidable deserts as far as the colourful
    islands,
Volcanoes erupt in Peru and vomit their wrath in the heavens,
Everywhere the earth trembles and the icons creak in Kastoria,
The silent town beside the lake.
Bolivár, you have the beauty of a Greek.


I first encountered you, as a child, in one of Phanar’s steep
    cobbled streets,
A lighted lamp in Mouchlio illumined your noble face.
Are you, I wonder, one of the myriad forms assumed, and
    successively discarded by Constantine Palaeologus?


Boyaca, Ayacucho. Ideas both illustrious and eternal. I was
    there.
We’d already left the old frontiers far behind:
Back in the distance, fires were burning in Leskovik.
And in the night, the army moved up towards the battle, its
    familiar sounds could already be heard.
Opposite, a grim Convoy of endless trucks returned with the
    wounded.


Don’t anyone be alarmed. Down there, see, the lake.
This is the way they\'ll come, beyond the rushes.
The roads have been mined: the work and repute of that
    Hormovo man, renowned, unrivalled in such matters.
    Everyone to their stations. The whistle’s sounding!
Come on, come on. Get the cannons uncoupled and set up,
    clean the barrels with the swabs, fuses lit and held
    ready,
Cannon-balls to the right. Vrass!
Vrass, Albanian for fire: Bolivár!


Every pineapple that was hurled and exploded,
Was a rose to the glory of the great general,
As he stood, stern and unshaken, amid the dust and tumult,
Gazing on high, his forehead in the clouds,
And the sight of him caused dread: fount of awe, path of
    justice, gate of salvation.


Yet, how many conspired against you, Bolivár,
How many traps did they not set for you to fall into and vanish,
One man, above all, a rogue, a snake, a native of
    Philippoupolis.
But what was that to you, like a tower you stood firm, upright,
    before Acongagua’s terror,
Holding a mighty cudgel and wielding it above your head.
The bald-headed condors, unafraid of the carnage and smoke of
    battle, took fright and flew up in terrified flocks,
And the llamas hurled themselves down the mountain slopes,
    dragging, as they fell, a cloud of earth and rocks.
And into the dark of Tartarus your enemies disappeared, lay
    low.
(When the marble arrives, the best from Alabanda, I’ll sprinkle
    my brow with Blachernae’s holy water,
I’ll use all my craft to hew your stance, to erect the statue of a
    new Kouros in Sikynos’ mountains,
Not forgetting, of course, to engrave on its base that famous
    “Hail, passer-by”.)


And here it should above all be stressed that Bolivar was never
    afraid, never, as they say, “lost his nerve”,
Not even at the most murderous hour of battle, nor in the bitter
    gloom of unavoidable treachery.
They say he knew beforehand, with unimaginable precision, the
    day, the hour, even the second: the moment,
Of the Great Battle that was for him alone,
In which he himself would be army and enemy, both
    vanquished and victor, triumphant hero and sacrificial
    victim.
(And the lofty spirit of such as Cyril Loukaris reared within
    him,
How he calmly eluded the despicable plots of the Jesuits and
    that wretched man from Philippoupolis!)


And if he was lost, if ever lost is such a one as Bolivar! who
    like Apollonius vanished into the heavens,
Resplendent like the sun he disappeared, in unimaginable glory,
    behind the gentle mountains of Attica and the Morea.


invocation

Bolivár! You are a son of Rigas Ferraios,
Of Antonios Economou – so unjustly slain – and brother to
    Pasvantzoglou,
The dream of the great Maximilien de Robespierre lives again
    on your brow,
You are the liberator of South America.
I don’t know how you were related, if one of your descendants
    was that other great American, the one from
    Montivideo,
One thing alone is sure, that I am your son.


CHORUS


strophe

            (entrée des guitares)

If the night, slow in passing,
Sends moons of old to console us,
If in the wide plain phantom shades
Burden flowing-haired maidens with chains,
The hour of victory, of triumph has come.
On hollow skeletons of field marshal generals
Cocked hats soaked in blood will be placed,
And the red that was theirs before the sacrifice
Will cover with rays the flag\'s lustre.


antistrophe

    (the love of liberty brought us here)

the ploughs at the palms’ roots
and the sun
that rises resplendent
amid trophies
and birds
and spears
will announce as far as a tear rolls
carried by the breeze to
the sea’s
depths
the most terrible oath
the more terrible darkness
the terrible tale:
Libertad


epode

            (freemasons’ dance)

Away with you curses, come near us no more, corazón,
From the cradle to the stars, from the womb to the eyes,
    corazón,
Where precipitous rocks, where volcanoes and seals, corazón,
Where swarthy faces, thick lips and gleaming white teeth,
    corazón,
Let the phallus be raised, the revels begin, with human
    sacrifice, dance, corazón,
In a carnival of flesh, to our ancestors’ glory, corazón,
That the seed of the new generation be sown, corazón.


        CONCLUSION:

Following the success of the South-American revolution, a
bronze statue of Bolivár was erected in Nauplion and
Monemvasia, on a deserted hill overlooking the town.
However, the fierce wind that blew at night caused the hero’s
frock-coat to flap furiously, creating a noise so great, so
deafening, that it was impossible for anyone to get a moment’s
rest, sleep was now out of the question. So the inhabitants
complained and, through the appropriate steps, succeeded in
having the monument torn down.



    SONG OF FAREWELL TO BOLIVÁR

(Here the sound of a distant band is heard, with
incomparable melancholy playing popular nostalgic songs and
dances from South America, preferably in sardane time)



       general
       what were you doing in Larissa
       you
       from
       Hydra?

BOLIVÁR