Cyprus-Forum.com

[Omer Seyhan]

TO THIS LAND DEDICATED

THIS is my island, this is my land,

and yet the living dead that walk its streets

and till its soil are not my people nor this land’s.

Each day they walk and do not see the skies,

each night they sleep, and waking are too dead

ever to dream save when they seek to hear

in dreams some petty alien-nationalist false-goal

And yet we could so easily awake and dream,

and feel in every stick and stone and leaf,

in the whole earth and air of this our land,

a nation’s fire smouldering for the need

of wind to set the flames alight and leaping high

to sweep and stir our hearts

and kindle in our minds firesticks of nationhood.

Once we have seen the sun through olive leaves

with not one thought of citrus or pines behind the mind;

once we have drunk the Zivania of the village

with no book-coloured smell of woodlands in the draught:

once we have felt this land, this land alone,

as our whole world, our wealth, our strength, our life,

then living blood shall course our veins anew.

This land shall then know patriots worthy

of its vast soil; no more shall petty slaves

- each in his puny separate mind intent

on his immediate ends – forever dance

colonial puppet jigs to distant tunes;

no more shall this our people be divided,

half-blind and wholly dead, blind to their destiny.

Then shall each one stand, Cypriot, mighty

in unity beneath Cypriot skies,

to this land dedicated, all thought and strength

bent to the building here in nationhood

of new life in this isle– new life, indeed,

mighty with national purpose,

strong with Cypriot need.