Today I drank tea on the patio and I thought of how we internalize the landscape we live in. It inhabits us. The Greek landscape is a lot of blue, blue skies, blue seas, and a lot of sun and light. It stirs my heart and it reminds me of beautiful poetry of the rugged terrain, of the trees and of the sky and the sea
‘You spoke about things they couldn’t see and so they laughed. Yet to row up the dark river against the current, to take the unknown road blindly, stubbornly, and to search for words rooted like the knotted olive tree- let them laugh. And to yearn for the other world to inhabit today’s suffocating loneliness, this ravaged present- let them be’ Giorgos Seferis, Greek poet awarded the Nobel Prize in 1963
ΕΠΙΦΑΝΙΑ – Γεώργιος Σεφέρης
Epiphany, 1937 by George Seferis (Translated by Edmund Keeley)
The flowering sea and the mountains in the moon’s waning
the great stone close to the Barbary figs and the asphodels
the jar that refused to go dry at the end of day
and the closed bed by the cypress trees and your hair
golden; the stars of the Swan and that other star, Aldebaran.
I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life, travelling
among yellow trees in driving rain
on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves,
no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark.
I’ve kept a rein on my life; on your left hand a line
a scar at your knee, perhaps they exist
on the sand of the past summer perhaps
they remain there where the north wind blew as I hear
an alien voice around the frozen lake.
The faces I see do not ask questions nor does the woman
bent as she walks giving her child the breast.
I climb the mountains; dark ravines; the snow-covered
plain, into the distance stretches the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing
neither time shut up in dumb chapels nor
hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads.
I’ve kept a rein on my life whispering in a boundless silence
I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers
like the breathing of the cypress tree that night
like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles
like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’.
I close my eyes looking for the secret meeting-place of the waters
under the ice the sea’s smile, the closed wells
groping with my veins for those veins that escape me
there where the water-lilies end and that man
who walks blindly across the snows of silence.
I’ve kept a rein on my life, with him, looking for the water that touches you
heavy drops on green leaves, on your face
in the empty garden, drops in the motionless reservoir
striking a swan dead in its white wings
living trees and your eyes riveted.
This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try
to recall your childhood years, those who left, those
lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea,
however much you ask bodies you’ve loved to stoop
under the harsh branches of the plane trees there
where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still
and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered,
the road has no relief; I’ve kept a rein on my life.
The snow and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.
Beautiful and Strange Homeland by Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979
I’ ve never seen a homeland more beautiful and strange
Than the one that fell to my lot
Throws a line to catch fish, catches birds instead
Sets up a boat on land, a garden in the waters
Weeps, kisses the ground, emigrates
Ends up a pauper, becomes brave
Reaches for a stone, lets it down
Tries to carve it, works miracles
Gets into a boat, reaches the ocean
Looks for revolutions, wants tyrants.
Metaphor and poetry
Objects like bags, suitcases and luggage have also often been used as symbols and containers for many ideas and experiences. A professor I once had described denial as: our packing our bags and permanently checking in a hotel. Luggage also conjures concepts of travel and departure, but also of revealing and understanding, as in unpacking an experience or an idea. In this last poem written by the Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos to his wife, a year before he died, the preparation of suitcases seem to be a metaphor for his last journey.