by Evris Tsakirides
Translated by Lucas Baron
The Pool, the lovely mother, produced quadruplet daughters: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. And she nursed them with her enchanted water to raise them to be beautiful, she bathed them and she combed them and caressed them. But as they grew, so did their longing to become the earth’s almighty queens.
And they drank up the Pool’s enchanted water, and as they drank it up they drained the Pool and
her beauty, and her loveliness were lost, and she was hollowed.
The sisters grew and they became the earth’s almighty queens, and they forgot their mother the lovely Pool and they grew envious and selfish.
When it was Spring’s time, /she/ believed that there was no one else on all the earth. And when it was Summer’s time, /she/ believed that there was no one else on all the earth. And again when Autumn’s hour would come,/ she/ believed that there was no one else on all the earth. And when Winter’s season arrived, /she/ too believed that there was no one else on all the earth. Whosever was the hour, time and season, she pressed her sisters to her will. How dare Winter whistle her snow song while Summer reigned on earth? And how dare Summer blast her heat-wave while Winter reigned on earth? And when Spring’s reign arrived, how dare barren Autumn gild the tree-leaves? And when her turn came to rule, how dare Spring spray the branches with buds?
And so time ran on, and each in turn pressed the others to her will. And under such a strain they began to weary and grow old. The time came when none of them could bear to take up the rule of earth, and they feared what would become of the earth without a queen. Then bitterness overtook them, that they had spent their lives so strained, and oh!, for not one of them could bear to take up the rule of earth, and oh!, for what would become of the earth without a queen. And tears followed on bitterness, and they wept, and days and nights they wept.
The tears ran a river and the river flowed and filled a hollow Pool. And deep inside the Pool they heard a whisper, sweet and strange, but familiar, and the four leaned in to listen. And as they leaned they saw their faces meet and merge in the water’s gleam, and they became one:
the loveliness of the Pool, their mother. The sisters remembered, and they listened to the whisper of the Pool pass through their lips, “Come, my child, come back; come, my child, come back,” and they leaned in and kissed it and the four returned to the Pool’s depths and they dissolved.
The Pool was nourished in the hollows of the earth and, from the mire she became, came Love (Eros), the earth’s first human, and her last.