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Ritsos, Yiannis – Selected Poems - After the Ceremony
Identifier
029413
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
From Selected Poems, tr. N. Stangos (1974)
After the Ceremony
With all the shouting, the noise, the beautiful colourful clothes,
we entirely forgot ourselves, we didn't even raise our eyes
to the tall pediments of the temple which, a month ago,
were being cleaned by workmen on scaffoldings. But when it
got dark
and the noise had quietened down, the youngest in our company
wandered away, went up the marble steps and stood
alone in the now empty space of the morning's ceremony. And
as he stood like this
(and we behind him, so as not to seem inferior), his handsome
head
slightly raised, fixed, bathed
in the June moon, he seemed
part of the pediment. We approached him,
we put our arms around each other's shoulders and went down
the many steps again. But he looked
as if he was still there, naked, marble, distant,
between the young gods and the horses.