Our Sun, by George Seferis

This sun was mine and yours; we shared it.
Who’s suffering behind the golden silk, who’s dying?
A woman beating her dry 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 cast light 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 dazzled you.
They died saying ‘We don’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 wouldn’t follow me.
And it was then I found out about those things behind the gold and the silk:
we don’t have time. The messengers were right.