Every Time in May

“This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try

to recall your childhood years, those who left, those

lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea,

however much you ask bodies you've loved to stoop

under the harsh branches of the plane trees there

where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still

and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered,

the road has no relief; I've kept a rein on my life.”

Excerpt from Giorgos Seferis’s poem “Epiphany”