Spring and Summer in Corfu and the Ionian Islands

Three evocative quotes for winter days, to cheer up my friends in the islands, and to indulge some personal nostalgia:


"Your waters dazzle like a floor of diamonds
Westward your tides
grope and caress the shores of Italy.

In a circumference of blue the seven islands
Foam-chiselled, rise, dissolve,
Join hands and dance upon the waves.

Zakynthos drowned in flowers
Cephalonia seamed with toil
Kythera and Paxoi
Corfu the enchantress of the mind and heart
Ithaka a mariner's rhyme in stone
Levkas the watch-tower of the Armatoli...."

From Song of the Seven Islands, by Kostis Palamas, translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert.


"In Corfu the approach of summer in mid-May is heralded by the arrival of the fireflies. Among the olive-groves, under the clumps of prickly pear by the roadside, in the canal cutting between the Old Fort and the Esplanade, in leafy gardens and in the quiet tree-haunted spaces in the town, the night glimmers with their myriad tiny hovering sparks of cool pale-green light. The fireflies rise and fall gently in the warm perfumed air and the little gems of light glow, fade and glow again, in rhythmic celebration of the final phase of spring. By mid-June, with the increasing summer heat, they have entirely disappeared."

Arthur Foss, from The Ionian Islands


"Soon it will be spring. Out of
This huge magazine of flowers, the earth,
We will enchant the house with roses,
The girls with flowers in their teeth,
The olives full of charm: and all of it
Given: can one say that
Any response is enough for those
Who have a woman, an island and a tree?"

Lawrence Durrell, from Letter to Seferis the Greek