By the houses of the living
and the houses of the dead
a small flame burns;
a door opened in the ground
releases the great blackness,
first light unfurled in the sky.

Keeper of the chambered sea,
they say that in the sea . . .
the story is widespread
though the details vary along the coast,
but the baby Ino, was a god?
out of a box from the sea.

                     *

As we came out of the mountains
the moment not day or night,
music surrounded us.

Out of the silence of the gorge
through walls of rock and air,
we walked in a tunnel of sound.

Long-song synthesised unearthly,
swirl of sea and Taygetos
shatters into goat bells.

Reforms into music of the passes,
random harmonics and goat stink
rises up to us earth song.

                     *

Running the high meadows
day and night in the skin of a lynx,
the bloody meniscus sticks.

Swallows roll in the mountain air,
pop music, something emotional, defiant
reaches into the same blue quarter.

Yannis Ritsos is free.