! ! A Brief Tribute To George Seferis, Poet

When the gods allot a time, a place, to those so mortal mortals whom they love to test, is it a greater gift they give to poets, to live in a land of honeybees and sun and sea and heroes sung, a land assured, content, of gods and marble, temples, amphitheatres, history, or in that land in times of tragedy, starvation, misery, division, internal war and conquered servitude? Ultimate, the irony – how can the gods think up such things? – to be ambassador, to represent a land from which to have been exiled half a life; exiled from within and exiled from without. The love the gods bestow (the Chorus cries) is terrifying; strange; to be hard learned.