Waiting For The Cock To Crow

It's amazing how often we sleep on a problem and the solution is there in the morning. I went to bed last night reflecting on yesterday's poem. I've just woken abruptly - the idea fresh in my mind that Peter denied Christ 3 times and that this is the key to the meaning of the 3 verses with their, if you like, 3 denials. I don't know where this idea came from. I wasn't consciously thinking towards it. I've never read any critical works on Seferis. I hardly know his poetry. It was as if someone had put the idea there. Very strange.

But I suppose this subconscious process, often active while we are sleep, is the basis of much creative thought. Artists, writers, many creative people often feel their work comes from a source "out there" - or, conversely, from somewhere "deep within" - which they are powerless to control. They are simply agents being channelled by a greater force. D. H. Lawrence, in his poem Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through, writes of the wind that blows through me. I've just looked up the poem, reminded myself of it. In it he mentions three strange angels. 3 again!

The human mind is an extraordinary thing. I always like the idea that the mind is a limitless place, that you can travel forever its depths and infinities. That you can go much further "inwards" than the physical body can ever journey "outwards".

But back to the poem Denial by Seferis. Does it mean we are living our lives somehow in the wrong way - though we can't help it since we are human and nature is a force over which we have no control - but we have the power to change? That our passion and desire are somehow misdirected - so the water tastes bad? The poem seems on the surface easy to understand. In fact it's quite mysterious.

Denial

This early love poem by Giorgos Seferis became, under the Greek Colonels' régime, an anthem of liberation:

Denial

On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life! a mistake!
so we changed our life...

Wounded

Giorgos Seferis, the Greek poet, wrote: Wherever I go Greece wounds me. Wounded by beauty? Wounded by love? Wounded by death? All 3, I think...