Gift from Tatiana: Nikiforos Vrettakos

Tatiana, a new friend from Greece, recently introduced me to Greek poet Nikiforos Vrettakos. I LOVE finding a new poet to love, and this one's spectacular. He reminds me a bit of Pablo Neruda, and when I peeked at Wikipedia, there were several similarities. Both published their first collections of poetry around 17-18 years of age. Both were involved in military/government and were dissidents in some way. And the poems of both are thoughtful, sensual, spiritual, yet earthy. 

The local public library does not have his books, so I just ordered a book of his selected poetry, Thirty Years in the Rain, used from Amazon.com. Thank you Tatiana!

A smaller world (from Diary, translated by Rick M. Newton)

I seek a shore where I can fence in

a patch of the horizon with

trees or reeds. Where, gathering infinity,

I can have the sense that: there are no machines

or very few; there are no soldiers

or very few; there are no weapons

or very few, and those few aimed at the exit

of the forests with wolves; or that there are no merchants

or very few at remote

points on the earth where

paved roads have not yet been laid.

God hopes that

at least in the poets' sobs paradise will never cease to exist.

The field of words (translated by Marjorie Chambers)

Like the bee round a wild

flower, so am I. I prowl

continuously around the word.

I thank the long lines

of ancestors who moulded the voice.

Cutting it into links, they made

meanings. Like smelters they

forged it into gold and it became

Homer, Aeschylus, the Gospels

and other jewels.

With the thread

of words, this gold

from gold, which comes from the depths

of my heart, I am linked, I take part in

the world.

Consider:

I said and wrote, "I love."