Here comes the sun! Here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right. Thank you George. And today, Day 567 of the daily poems, we have our translator poet Timothy Adès to thank for his Summer Courtship ‘The voyage’ by Greek beach-comber poet Lámbros Porphýras. Yes, methysméni varkoúla does mean drunken boat … and away we go!
The voyage
by Lámbros Porphýras 1879-1932
translated from Greek by Timothy Adès
A sun-flooded day, an incredible dream! with Annoula:
a few good old friends and some girls and Annoula and I
got into a blue, drunken boat, methysméni varkoúla,
got in and went off and away to the Island of Joy.
Not a cloud and not even a puff of black smoke in the sky:
all around us were breasts full of love, there were throats snowy-white:
there was light on fair hair, on the sea: light was everywhere, light:
oh, but who ever got there at all, to the Island of Joy?
Oh, what do I care if we get there? Who cares? In the ringing
sweet laughter of friends, all life’s troubles go laughing away!
We are rolled in infinity! Hark at Annoula’s wild singing!
Looming somewhere, wherever, the faraway Island of Joy.
Lámbros Porphýras
translated by Timothy Adès
published in The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present, W.W. Norton