Caïque

  Caïque in the wind's center,

  sails hauled in bow-taut,

  tiller swung into the final tack

  against the bare blue mountains.

   And the heaven-coursing howl that swamped

   rigging, backstays, the yard

   -- dolphins in pursuit all the way --

   strummed her over the waves: an upright lyre.

Angelos Sikelianos

Selected Poems

  Caïque

  [fragment]

Edmund Keeley and

  Philip Sherrard, translation

Princeton University Press, 1979©

Thorny
California, 3 March