Odysseas Elytis

I was fortunate enough to listen to a 1990 reading of Odysseas Elytis's work by one of his translators, Olga Broumas, just the other day. It was startling. I plucked this 1988 publishing of The Little Mariner off the shelves, and have been reading through it agape for a few days. Here's a poem from a section titled "With Light & With Death."

3

You're young - I know - and there's nothing.
People, nations, freedoms, nothing.
But you are. And while you
Leave by one foot you arrive with the other
Torn by love's light
With or without your will
Piper of plants you come gathering the idols
Against us. Long as your voice lasts.

How when you touch the virgin's cricket
The muscles pulse under your skin
Or how animals who drink then gaze
Erase misery: like you
Take thunder from the Gods
And the world obeys. Go then
Spring depends on you. Accelerate lightning

Grab SHOULD by its d and skin it to its s.