Poetry 1948

this age

of civil strife

is not an age

for poetry

or similar things:

when something

is

to be written

it is

as if

it were written

on the other side

of death

announcements

this is why

my poems

are so bitter

(and when, indeed, were they not?)

and why they are

-above all-

so

few

Odysseus Elytis