Rose-like when I married you and brought you to the mill,
your petals peel off one by one to fall at each year’s fill.
Your beauty, it evaporates and mingles with the clouds,
but falls again as morning dew to perfume all the flowers.
Rose-like ⋮ all the flowers.
Kavrós (Yánnis Hassapladhákis), Cretan “mantinádha” rhyming couplets
Ρόδο ’σουν όντε σ’ έπηρα και σ’ έφερα στο μύλο,
μα κάθε χρόνος που περνά σου πέφτει κι ένα φύλλο.
Τα κάλλη σου ξατμίζουνται, τα σύννεφα ’κλουθούνε,
μα στ’ άνθη δρόσος πέφτουνε, γι’ αυτό μοσχοβολούνε.
These Greek lines are spoken by the doctor Yorgos Markakis in the documentary feature The Light Inside (2015), directed by Stavros Psillakis.
They were referenced in an essay titled “Everything Depends on the Quality of the Encounter” that Psillakis wrote for the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival publication On the Threshold (TiDF25).
The commissioned translation was not used in full.
see also
A mutilated ⋮ death.
All that I ⋮ back.
Like ⋮ the smell of earth.
Words ⋮ seem unrecognisable.
arkhæio
ON THE THRESHOLD
