[Dichtung]

Theodore Stephanides
Ghostly Ballad
When the evening sun has set,
Ocean-borne, the silhouette
Of an island reaches high,
Stabbing lance-like at the sky.
And the clouds' candescent blood
Stains the wave top in a flood
Of reflected crimson light.
Onward sweeps relentless night
Till day's lingering colours, banished,
Slowly, one by one, have vanished;
And a gloom succeeds their mirth
Over sea and sky and earth...

Then upon a darkened cape
Softly glides a vaporous shape,
And a maiden fair to see
Stands in lonely misery.
Pale she is as autumn mist
By the rising sun unkissed,
And her limbs transparent gleam
As the flow of mountain stream.
To the sea's encroaching tide
Turns she with her arms flung wide,
And her distant voice is heard
Like the cry of ocean bird:

"Loved one, many a weary year
Did I stand in faith or fear On
the brow of yonder cliff, Waiting
for your homing skiff. Often,
gazing through the gale, Foam-
flakes took I for your sail, But,
like foam upon the wave, Died
my wasted hopes. My grave
Loomed at last, a headstone white,
On that seaward-jutting height
Whence for all those endless years
I had sought you through my tears.
There upon that cliff I lay,
Lingering night and livelong day,
While the west-wind and the sea
Whispered of eternity...

"Yestereve a storm arose
And amid its frenzied throes,
Breakers lashed with fiercer roar
At their age-old foe, the shore.
Quaked the cliff with every blow,
Quaked the overhanging brow,
Till along a widening rift
Its whole margin, torn adrift,
Crashed below into the wave,
Bearing in its fall my grave.
Now upon this wave-worn beach
Which the deep-sea billows reach,
Have my bleaching bones been cast —
Loved one, come to me at last!"

Far away across the the main
Soars a gleam to sink again,
Borne amid the breaker's roar
Ever nearer to the shore.
Ever closer looms that light,
Brightening against the night,
And a distant voice is heard
Like the cry of ocean bird:

"Loved one, on the wind-shaped tide
Sped my skiff to gain your side;
But upon a treacherous reef
Came my fragile barque to grief.
Deep down deep beneath the foam,
All my thoughts to you did home,
But I could not leave the wave
Hemming me in deep=sea grave.
There beneath the tide I lay,
Lingering night and livelong day,
While the west-wind and the sea
Whispered of eternity...

"Ever were my dreams of you:
Wondering if your love was true;
Or if, lip to lip, your breast
Other fingers had caressed.
Ah, how often grew the brine
Bitterer yet with tears of mine,
Welling from my sockets blind
When such visions held my mind!
Year by year, the sand-banks shifted,
Deep-sea currents churned and drifted,
And my hollow bones they bore
Ever nearer to the shore.

"Yestereve a storm arose
And, amid its frenzied throes,
Quaked the very seas with dread
To their dark abysmal bed.
Undertows, amid the shades,
Rasped along the ocean glades,
Raising clods of inky slime
Dormant since the birth of time,
Hustling in their shoreward sweep
Torpid monsters of the deep,
Crushing corallines and shells
And Medusa's crystal bells!

"Mingled with the weeds and stones,
Eddies swirled around my bones,
And the ocean's mighty hand
Urged them on towards the land.
Ah, beloved, it is the day
When our souls shall meet for aye,
When for us relenting Fate
Opens wide a long closed Gate.
Loved one, see, upon the shingle
Now our bones together mingle,
For at last the cruel main
Reunites us both again!"
***
On a slanting surge reclining,
Two clasped forms are seen entwining,
And the breaker lifts them high
As it towers to the sky.
Then two star-flakes, silvery-white,
Glide together through the night,
Till they seem to blend afar —
Brighter than the Evening Star.

(from "Autumn Gleanings: Corfu Memoirs and Poems")