The King of Asini

George Seferis

’Ασíνην τε. . . — Iliad

All morning long we looked around the citadel

starting from the shaded side there where the sea

green and without lustre — breast of a slain peacock —

received us like time without an opening in it.

Veins of rock dropped down from high above,

twisted vines, naked, many-branched, coming alive

at the water’s touch, while the eye following them

struggled to escape the monotonous see-saw motion,

growing weaker and weaker.

On the sunny side a long empty beach

and the light striking diamonds on the huge walls.

No living thing, the wild doves gone

and the king of Asini, whom we’ve been trying to find for two years now,

unknown, forgotten by all, even by Homer,

only one word in the Iliad and that uncertain,

thrown here like the gold burial mask.

You touched it, remember its sound? Hollow in the light

like a dry jar in dug earth:

the same sound that our oars make in the sea.

The king of Asini a void under the mask

everywhere with us everywhere with us, under a name:

‘’Ασíνην τε. . .’Ασíνην τε. . .’

and his children statues

and his desires the fluttering of birds, and the wind

in the gaps between his thoughts, and his ships

anchored in a vanished port:

under the mask a void.

Behind the large eyes the curved lips the curls

carved in relief on the gold cover of our existence

a dark spot that you see travelling like a fish

in the dawn calm of the sea:

a void everywhere with us.

And the bird, a wing broken,

that flew away last winter

— tabernacle of life —

and the young woman who left to play

with the dog-teeth of summer

and the soul that sought the lower world gibbering

and the country like a large plane-leaf swept along by the torrent of the sun

with the ancient monuments and the contemporary sorrow.

And the poet lingers, looking at the stones, and asks himself

does there really exist

among these ruined lines, edges, points, hollows and curves

does there really exist

here where one meets the path of rain, wind and ruin

does there exist the movement of the face, shape of the tenderness

of those who’ve waned so strangely in our lives,

those who remained the shadow of waves and thoughts with the sea’s boundlessness

or perhaps no, nothing is left but the weight

the nostalgia for the weight of a living existence

there where we now remain unsubstantial, bending

like the branches of a terrible willow tree heaped in unremitting despair

while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes uprooted in the mud

image of a form that the sentence to everlasting bitterness has turned to stone:

the poet a void.

Shieldbearer, the sun climbed warring,

and from the depths of the cave a startled bat

hit the light as an arrow hits a shield:

‘’Ασíνην τε. . .’Ασíνην τε. . .’. If only that could be the king of Asini

we’ve been searching for so carefully on this acropolis

sometimes touching with our fingers his touch upon the stones.

Asini, summer ’38—Athens, Jan. ’40

501

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The Laboratory by Robert Browning

Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,
May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely,
As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy—
Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

He is with her, and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,
Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste!
Better sit thus and observe thy strange things,
Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.