XXIV

 

Gutuna idatzi zidan aitak—

Aita, ikasia, ajolakabea, indartsua,

Gerkera obeto irakatsiaz

Ikastunak uste duten baño—

Neguan gerkera irakatsiaz, udan berriz,

Narragansett’eko ur golkoan

Mastakoan itsasoratuaz;

Zoriontsuagoa, onenean,

Ur urdiñetan lasaiago,

Urrutiko alaba kezkadunik gabe.

Eguna joan, eguna etorri,

Brenton Lightship eta Beavertail,

Cuttyhunk’etik kanpora,

Aizebakian, Cape’tik urruti,

Hellas eta Troy bururatu,

Greziar abestiak

Pozik kantatuz—

Lerro auek bere ilarrian idatziak bear:

“Nork jakingo urte luzeak dijoaztenean

Zoriontsu bizitu danak, zerua aurkitu ez ote”.

Nere aita, ain urruti—

Booth’eko lauso lodian ainguratuta,

Gogoan neukan, Devon’en.

 

 

 

XXIV

My father wrote me a letter— / My father, scholarly, indolent, strong, / Teaching Greek better / Than high-school students repay— / Teaching Greek in the winter, but all summer long / Sailing a yawl in Narragansett Bay / Happier perhaps when I was away, / Free of an anxious daughter, / He could sail blue water / Day after day, / Beyond Brenton Reef Lightship, and Beavertail, / Past Cuttyhunk to catch a gale / Off the Cape, while he thought of Hellas and Troy, / Chanting with joy / Greek choruses—those lines that he said / Must be written some day on a stone at his head: / ‘But who can know / As the long years go / That to live is happy, has found his heaven.’ / My father, so far away— / I thought of him, in Devon, / Anchoring in a blind fog in Booth Bay.