“The Primal Paradise” 	(page 58, "MARIA NEPHELE", by Odysseas Elytis)

A Greek poem translated by George A. Stathis
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I don't know at all, anything about "Primal Sins",
and other Western inventions.

Nevertheless, so far away, so long ago,
back in the frost of our first days,
even before the time of our Mother's Hut
it felt so nice, at the time!

The white garments of the angels I remember
closed-up in front but left unbuttoned
exactly like those girls in uniforms,
girls working at the hairdressers.
-a miracle! and all the geraniums
in a long pavement, all-white in the lime
turned to the wind, you could see them grinding
ceaselessly the white pith of the Sun...

Sitting cross-legged
in the beach where the wind shivered
full of golden spark from the sneezers
I could see them galloping
girls of the South-East Wind
girls with cool buttocks...

The angels were teasing me,
gathered around me, asking:
"What is Pain?" and "What is sickness?"
and I didn't know at all.
I didn't know, I hadn't even heard of 'the Tree'
through which death came into the world.

Well? Death, was it true? Not this death, but the other one
-which will come with the first tear of the newly-born?
Was Injustice true? Was the rage of the nations true?
Was the Work-toil real, all day and all-night-long, too?

And the Archangels, all of them,
Michael, Gabriel, Ouriel, Rafael,
Gaboudelon, Akir, Arphoughiton,
Belouchos, Zabouleon, were laughing,
shaking their golden heads like corn-plants in the wind

knowing that the only death, the only one
was the death manufactured by the minds of men
and their biggest Lie, the Tree, never (even) existed !


-Odysseas Elytis.