Yesterday I bought a copy of "Selected Poems" by Nikiforos Vrettakos, translated by David Connolly.
From "I Graphi Mou" ("My Writing"):
I read the next poem (the Greek original) out loud to a prose-writer:
The laconic comment and reaction? "He's grateful for what he's got".
Some of Vrettakos' other poems have been set to music, like All the years that I was away ~ Όλα τα χρόνια που έλειπα and Τ' όνομά σου - and I am going to build a house ~ Θα κτίσω ένα σπίτι.
I once had the opportunity to meet him in Athens, back in 1979. Nikiforos Vrettakos is on the far right.
I translated excerpts from his poem One More Spring (from In Memoriam, 1940-1944). A few lines from my version in Corfu Blues (the book) follow:
"Let's tell them, so they understand:
Olympus will not bend, will not be lowered!
The sun doesn't change,
The colours of the country never change,
The song is never interrupted in the middle!"
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