It’s me,
Anaximander of Miletus,
exiled from my country.
I can still hear the clatter of black balls
falling into the clay urn.
Guilty.
But one should weigh carefully
what exile is.
Is it only once that a man
experiences exile?
To begin with
you are exiled from mother’s womb.
It’s the first misfortune, and the cause of all the others.
Later on you are pushed away
from her breast, from her lap.
Exiled from the child’s charming ignorance,
then from youth, strength
and from the small hearts of women.
Exiled, one after another, from all ideas
that people value as good.
Finally, after you suffer through all exiles,
you’ll be exiled from life,
from this mere sliver of breath.
But exiled from your country?
From that scrap of earth
no more fertile than any other,
from that throng of raucous fellow citizens
who stink of garlic and onions?
So I’m exiled
from brawls, squabbles, stench.
But this isn’t punishment. It’s almost a favor.
If I were a poet
I’d compose hymns of thanks
to extol my country,
so pleasant from a distance.
It’s as hot here as in the oven of an Athenian potter.
The sea’s the same
and surely the stars won’t be different when they rise.
Here, on this promontory, we’ll found
a city of deliverance
from homeland squabbles.
I can already see red tiles,
on which seagulls will rest,
windows shaded by a fishing net,
porches covered by grapevines, among fig trees,
where we’ll enjoy the evening.
Exiled—from what privileges?
From the swindles of merchants?
From the insolence of petty bureaucrats?
From the conceit of philosophers?
From the corruption of judges?
From the whorishness of writers?
Or perhaps from the privilege of a crowd’s laughter
when jugglers set themselves up near the agora?
And yet,
I, Anaximander
of Miletus,
exiled from my country!
Denied the right to tremble about its fate,
to suffer with it and to cry.