Day: July 24, 2026

Swamped

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excerpt

When Saturday finally arrives, it is a beautiful, hot summer day,
so hot Eteocles goes to the sea twice, early in the morning and again
in afternoon. He meets Antonia on his morning visit to the sea, and
she tells him she is planning to go to the party with her girlfriend
Koula. Eteocles sends her a kiss with a movement of his lips, and Antonia
responds in kind, then they dive into the water together and
swim well out from the shore. Eteocles swims close to her and puts
his arm around her waist, but Antonia isn’t a good swimmer. She is
uncomfortable in deep water, and his touch makes her nervous. She
asks him to let her swim in peace, then says, “Tonight … tonight at
the party.” It is a promise.
Hesperus, the lone evening star, bright as ever, gazes down at the
earth later that day, watching the little ants that scurry about searching
for a common goal, a common word, a common future without
perils or famine or devastation. Bright as ever, the evening star gazes
at the land below and wonders how long it will take before its inhabitants
figure things out and settle on the concept of people helping
people rather than bombing and obliterating each other.
Under its gaze Eteocles and George walk together down the road
along the hillside toward the shore where the house of the party girl
is located. When they reach there, they find a crowd of boys and girls
already gathered in the backyard that faces out toward the sea no
more than about thirty meters away where the elevation dips sharply
down to the seashore with its sand dunes and lapping waves.
All the partygoers gather around the boys who have brought the
music from Athens, waiting for Eteocles to put a disc on so they can
dance, and as soon as this is done, all the boys and girls suddenly become
couples. George quickly pairs off with Maria, his favorite girl
in the village, and pulls her tight while the music, the latest hit by a
popular Italian singer, tuneful and modern, excites everyone and mixes
with the heady smell of the sea to create an exhilarating atmosphere.
At that moment Antonia enters the yard with Koula, a girl with black
eyes and black hair tied in a bun on top of her head.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562976

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

The Unquiet land

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excerpt

“Beware of pride, Caitlin,” Padraig admonished. “‘Pride goeth before destruction.’ Learn another lesson from your father. He was a proud man. He sought self-sufficiency and in doing so displayed spiritual pride, what the Greeks called hubris. They warned—and no one knew this better than Finn MacLir—that hubris was certain to attract the gods’ disfavour. Hubris is the sin of sins, the primal cause of sin. It consists in man’s belief that he can lift himself to the level of the divine. Beware of that, Caitlin. Only by recognising our complete worthlessness can we find salvation, entirely through God’s grace.”
Caitlin looked steadfastly at Padraig. Then she said slowly, as if weighing her words, “If you thought you could ever win my father to Christianity with a message like that—recognising our complete worthlessness—you must be very, very stupid, Padraig. No wonder my father had nothing but utter contempt for your beliefs.”
Caitlin could see from the narrowing of Padraig’s eyes and the tightening of the muscles in his jaw that her words had hurt him; but she was relentless. “He scorned your God, Padraig. He scorned all the gods. You call it hubris, the sin of sins. Finn MacLir was guilty of it, blatantly guilty. Yet he defied the gods to the very end. And even in the clutches of death they could not break his spirit. He was a man, Padraig, a proud man, and proud to be man. And I am proud to have been his daughter.”
Caitlin rose angrily, strode out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
҂
She brushed the small heap of dust into a shovel and tossed it outside through the door of the cottage. The cool evening breeze whirled it away towards the stone wall by the head of the loaney. Michael would soon be coming up the loaney from the house, and Caitlin looked for the big, familiar figure, his shoulders almost as wide as the rough path between the walls, his hair almost as yellow as the flowers on the whins. But he did not appear. He had gone to the village to talk business with Joe Carney, the skipper of Finn’s fishing boat, the Drumard Maid. Michael wanted to sell the boat, and Joe wanted to buy. Perhaps they had made a deal and gone to the Harbour Bar to seal it.
Caitlin’s gaze shifted from the shadowed loaney to the direction of the harbour at Corrymore, far below her, and the ruins of Killyshannagh Church. Below the green sod and the dark earth down there, unseen from…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Katerina Anghelaki Rooke – Selected Poems

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The Vitos Calendar
To the memory of Nikos Kazantzakis


FIRST DAY
my body became the beginning of a voyage.
Lights on the shore, a funeral procession
for the verdure of summer
the calls of mothers
took an autumnal echo
in the forgiveness of twilight.
I walk as the first rain
comes from the sea
for me the escape — quench of
an ancient thirst — was called death.
may the so winds blow
and slowly mark the orchards of the horizon
that we, the final comrades, shall cultivate.
silent caiques await the morning twilight
in the nightly quietness of the harbor.
The taste of the grape and of the fig
belong to memory now
my body became the beginning of a voyage.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562965

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763521

Neo-Hellene Poets: An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry

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PAN
Quiet! Don’t you sometimes hear from deep in the orchard
the Gods of agriculture weeping their green holiday
as flutes sing sweetly to each other?
(in the cisterns the face of autumn still reflecting)
The clear skies didn’t fool me yesterday
I saw Him trying to find his way among the grapevines
His moulted skin shimmering on His back.
He stopped: up high, the moon, malicious, shone.
He tuned His ear to listen to the softly blowing breeze.
His eyes and ears searched for vanished echoes
in that still hour when the night turns numb and frozen
and straight to his lips He brought his reed,
discordant yet so sweet, hatred mixed with laughter,
exotic tune drawing evil from the vines
fast tune dispersing unknown shivers
and yet the dead leaves stood and danced.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562959

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763513