Comments & Greek artists: No one will tell our fate...

Greek poetry & Greek painting, Greek artists, modern Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Thessaloniki ΙΙΙ, oil on canvas

No one will tell our fate, and that is that,
We ourselves will tell the sun’s fate, and that is that...

Odysseas Elytis

This Wind that Loiters

This wind that loiters among the quinces
This insect that sucks the vines
This stone that the scorpion wears next to his skin
And these sheaves on the threshing floor
That play the giant to small barefoot children.

The images of the Resurrection
On walls that the pine trees scratched with their fingers
This whitewash that carries the noonday on its back
And the cicadas, the cicadas in the ears of the trees.

Great summer of chalk
Great summer of cork
The red sails slanting in gusts of wind
On the sea-floor white creatures, sponges
Accordions of the rocks
Perch from the fingers even of bad fishermen
Proud reefs on the fishing lines of the sun.

No one will tell our fate, and that is that,
We ourselves will tell the sun’s fate, and that is that.