After a hundred years, nobody knows the place...

After a hundred years
Nobody knows the place,--
Agony, that enacted there,
Motionless as peace...

Yannis Stavrou, Sunset on Acropolis, oil on canvas

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

After a hundred years

After a hundred years
Nobody knows the place,--
Agony, that enacted there,
Motionless as peace.

Weeds triumphant ranged,
Strangers strolled and spelled
At the lone orthography
Of the elder dead.

Winds of summer fields
Recollect the way,--
Instinct picking up the key
Dropped by memory.


Water, is taught by thirst

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land—by the Oceans passed.
Transport—by throe—
Peace—by its battles told—
Love, by Memorial Mold—
Birds, by the Snow.

I'm nobody! Who are you?

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish -- you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek painters: I like a look of Agony...

Literature & Greek artists, modern Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Night patrol, oil on canvas

Emily Dickinson

I like a look of Agony

I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it's true—
Men do not sham Convulsion,
Nor simulate, a Throe—

The Eyes glaze once—and that is Death—
Impossible to feign
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.

If the foolish, call them "flowers"

If the foolish, call them "flowers"—
Need the wiser, tell?
If the Savants "Classify" them
It is just as well!

Those who read the "Revelations"
Must not criticize
Those who read the same Edition—
With beclouded Eyes!

Could we stand with that Old "Moses"—
"Canaan" denied—
Scan like him, the stately landscape
On the other side—

Doubtless, we should deem superfluous
Many Sciences,
Not pursued by learned Angels
In scholastic skies!

Low amid that glad Belles lettres
Grant that we may stand,
Stars, amid profound Galaxies—
At that grand "Right hand"!

Comments & Greek artists, modern Greek artists, painters: An altered look about the hills...

Poetry & Greek artists, modern Greek artists, Greek painters


Yannis Stavrou, Man & Tree, oil on canvas

Emily Dickinson

An altered look about the hills

An altered look about the hills—
A Tyrian light the village fills—
A wider sunrise in the morn—
A deeper twilight on the lawn—
A print of a vermillion foot—
A purple finger on the slope—
A flippant fly upon the pane—
A spider at his trade again—
An added strut in Chanticleer—
A flower expected everywhere—
An axe shrill singing in the woods—
Fern odors on untravelled roads—
All this and more I cannot tell—
A furtive look you know as well—
And Nicodemus' Mystery
Receives its annual reply!

Delight becomes pictorial

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,--
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.

The mountaln at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little,--
And that's the skies!

Comments & Greek artists, contemporary Greek artists: To take us lands away...

Poets & Greek painters, contemporary Greek artists


Yannis Stavrou, Thessaloniki ΙΙ, oil on canvas

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away...

Emily Dickinson

A Book

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Aphorisms

• I'm nobody, who are you?
• If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
• If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
• It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
• Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.
• Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.
• A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
• A wounded deer leaps the highest.
• After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.
• Beauty is not caused. It is.
• Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.
• Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.
• Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.
• Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.
• Dwell in possibility.
• Dying is a wild night and a new road.
• Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.
• Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.
• Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.
• For love is immortality.
• Forever is composed of nows.
• Fortune befriends the bold.
• He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.
• Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all.
• How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!
• I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.