The Renunciation of Poetry

(Hofmannsthal in Athens, 1908)

These ruinous days of autumn. At dawn

the brightness seeps through the crumbling air,

at dusk the air gathers up the brightness.

So this is Greece, fabled decay. For years

he dreamt of caressing the flanks of these hills

and standing on the Aegean's thunderous shoulders,

but now he feels a gust of disappointment

at a country of tombs and columns, graveyards

and excavations, stones and fragments of stones.

The dust of travel still clings to his body

and particles of sunlight fade on his skin.

What has happened to the eternal presences?

He climbs to the Acropolis in early evening

to watch the sun descending behind the Parthenon.

The first fires are being stoked in the sky,

and there is a smell of acacias, ripening

wheat and the open sea. But nothing penetrates.

In this light everything disintegrates into mist.

These Greeks, he wonders, what are they

but shadows dissolving into shadows, prophets

of non-existence, premonitions of emptiness.

Impossible antiquity, aimless searchings.

He despises them for becoming vain boasts

and eternal treacheries, wall decorations.

In the museum he sees showcases of death:

a goblet that resembles Kronos's shoulder,

a serpent that evokes the shape of an arm.

And then he sees her: an enormous figure,

heavy and lithic, staring at him

with slanting, expressionless eyes. A virgin-

animal, divine-a sacrificial offering.

He closes his eyes: someone is touching

her breast and kneeling, passing her knees,

nestling a head on her foot. For once

the unattainable has opened its arms

and beckoned, the abyss has yawned... .

He glances up: there are four others

glaring at him, vacant sockets for eyes.

Their voices are lamps fading in daylight,

an insolent laughter rising from the floor,

an echoing silence. Their faces are masks,

the overpowering bodies withdrawn to stone.

He turns back to look at her but she is gone:

the statue is dead, nothing can revive it.

The goddess is something that has died in him.