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IF I WERE ANOTHER

If I were another on the road, I would not have looked
back, I would have said what one traveler said
to another: Stranger! awaken
the guitar more! Delay our tomorrow so our road
may extend and space may widen for us, and we may get rescued
from our story together: you are so much yourself… and I am
so much other than myself right here before you!

If I were another I would have belonged to the road,
neither you nor I would return. Awaken the guitar
and we might sense the unknown and the route that tempts
the traveler to test gravity. I am only
my steps, and you are both my compass and my chasm.
If I were another on the road, I would have
hidden my emotions in the suitcase, so my poem
would be of water, diaphanous, white,
abstract, and lightweight… stronger than memory,
and weaker than dewdrops, and I would have said:
My identity is this expanse!

If I were another on the road, I would have said
to the guitar: Teach me an extra string!
Because the house is farther, and the road to it prettier—
that’s what my new song would say. Whenever
the road lengthens the meaning renews, and I become two
on this road: I… and another!

Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly’s Burden, 2008. English translation by Fady Joudah.

ANAFI’S PROMISE

The islands of the archipelago declared their support for him;
Anaphe out of promise, Astypalaea out of fear.

Ovid, The Metamorphoses, book VII.

ANAFI’S GHOSTS

Between May and October 1820, a sacoleva ship coming from the island of Anafi and loaded with fragments from the Temple of Apollo Clarios for the Fauvel collection stopped at Milos. Among other debris, it took on board the arms of the Venus de Milo, which had been discovered shortly before, and set off for Piraeus. However, en route, it was struck by a squall and sank. (G. Hunald, L’intermédiaire de chercheurs et curieux, n. 207, 25 December 1876.)

159. Standing woman, veiled, striking a tympanum. Found in Anafi, 1867. (Edmond Desnoyers, Catalogue du musée historique de la ville d’Orléans, 1882.)

Fauvel set out with the squadron commanded by de Rigny, to make a tour of the Archipelago; he revisited Delos and Santorini, and had himself taken to Anafi where he found on a mountain some poorly made statues that had been freshly unearthed. (Ph.-E. Legrand, Biographie de Louis-François-Sébastien Fauvel, antiquaire et consul de France (1753-1838), Revue archéologique, 1897.)

The coins of Anafi, a small island in the Aegean Sea near Crete, feature a vase that the scholar Celestino Cuvedoni did not hesitate to identify as an “anaphœa.” This is at least a type of thermopotis that we are familiar with, and we must say that it closely resembles our vase no. 7, except that the handles are placed horizontally. (A. L., Revue archéologique, 1ère année, n. 2, 1844-45.)

What exactly was the “tauropoly,” which Hesychius, a 6th-century Greek philosopher, described as a festival of Artemis? What was the “taurophony,” a religious festival practiced on Anaphe, in the Cyclades, and in Mylasa, in Caria? Mysteries! (M. Bouzanquet, École antique de Nîmes, 01 janvier 1928.)

ANAFI’S REVENGE

An inhabitant of the island of Anafi had released two hares on the island of Astypalaia, which previously had none but did have partridges. He wanted to take revenge on an Astypalaian who had brought two partridges to the island of Anafi, where these birds multiplied so much that the inhabitants found themselves on the verge of abandoning their homeland. (Histoire et mémoires de l’Institut royal de France, 1824.)

May 2024