POEM BY JOHN POLEMIS
MOTHERLAND
What is our motherland? Perhaps the plains
and snow-capped mountain peaks?
Is it perhaps the golden sun that shines upon her
or is it night’s innumerable bright stars?
Is it perhaps each of her shallow shores
and all her counties with their villages,
each landscape, every isle that distantly appears
on each one of her many seas?
Is it perhaps her ruined monuments,
the ancient temples crumbling in the sun,
yet decorated by her art’s immortal glory
that echoes everywhere you turn?
All these are our motherland. These and those
and what we have deep in our hearts
which unseen, like a sun ray, shines
and calls inside us: Let us march, my boys!
Manolis Aligizakis 