Stephen Dobyns on Yannis Ritsos

Ritsos and the Metaphysical Moment in Best Words, Best Order (1996) by Stephen Dobyns:

For Ritsos, what is important is that a connection is made between human beings and that our lives have been increased. This is his business as a poet: to help us live by awakening us to something beyond the mundane, by trying to connect us to a mystery that his poems celebrate.

The Meaning of Simplicity from Ritsos in Parentheses (1979) translated by Edmund Keeley:

I hide behind simple things that you may find me;
if you don't find me, you'll find the things,
you'll touch what my hand has touched,
the imprints of our hands will merge.

The August moon glitters in the kitchen
like a pewter pot (it becomes like this because of what I tell you)
it lights up the empty house and the kneeling silence of the house--
always the silence remains kneeling.

Every word is a way out
for an encounter often canceled,
and it's then a word is true, when it insists on a meeting.

Three more from The Negatives of Silence (1987).