This work was created as part of the Dance Division’s Global Experiential Learning (GEL) trip to Greece in summer 2024. It was presented at The Egg on the island of Ikaria, at the public theater in Diavolitsi, and the outdoor amphitheater of Karystos. Special thanks to Lily Hemingway, Kiana Ducusin, Jenna Lucy, Ashley Reed, Ian Sabatine, Kirsten Trump, Athena Michael, Maria Boyer, Cathy Loranger, Ann Coverstone, Katherine Gerner, Olga Burani (Mayor of Diavolitsi), Maria Verouchi (Mayor of Karystos), and Yiannis Hondrokoukis.
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 sunray, shines
And calls inside us: Let us march, my boys!
Listen to my dream, my love,
My goddess of beauty.
I dreamed that one night
I walked out with you.
We sauntered together
In a beautiful garden
And in awe you gazed
At all the gleaming stars.
So I asked them, tell me,
Oh stars, are any of you
Up there as bright as
The eyes of my love?
Tell me if you’ve ever seen
Such glorious hair,
Or such a hand, or such a leg
Such otherworldly beauty
Which anyone who sees
At once demands to know
How such an angel can exist
On earth here, without wings.
With every kiss that night
You sweetly gave me, oh my love,
A new rose bloomed
In that garden of roses
And bloomed the whole night long
Until the down light
Discovered us together,
Our faces pallid now.
My love, this was my dream.
It now depends on you
To keep me in your heart
Until my dream becomes reality
Song that blackbirds sing along the creeks
And on the mountainsides the partridges
And in ravines the nightingales
And in the grapevine groves the lissome girls
Where prettiest Golfo sings this to the grapevine:
My well-pruned vine with your big leaves,
I’ll come to harvest your red ripened fruit
To make my immortal wine full of aroma
And in my cool cellar I will store and hide it
Counting the years and months
Until spring comes and a warm summer
When my love returns from foreign lands
And I’ll go down the yard to hold his horse
I’ll hug and kiss his eyes and lips
I’ll offer him my wine from this grapevine
So he forgets the pain of foreign lands
Another autumn
And i didn’t open
The big gate to the garden
Leaves no one has stepped on
In the pathways of the garden
I haven’t forgotten the season of illusions
Yet, time
Passed slowly like light rain
That ravaged the yard
Just before daybreak
I’m the tall tree that follows the line of prayer as it rises
Spoken by a tranquil soul
I’m the lance that pierces the red dusk and guards the Invisible
From denial and irony
I’m the black cassock of the monk who hasn’t finished
His penance in the festivity of the land
I’m the bell tower in the temple of pain that chimes my silence
For the souls that daily seek solace in vespers and matins
Drink your wine in the dark tavern by the sea,
Now that the autumn rains have started,
Drink in with sailors facing you and stooping fishermen,
Men whom poverty and angry seas have punished.
Drink your wine so that your soul grows free
And if grim Fate arrives smile upon it
And if new sufferings befall you let them also drink
And when Hades comes, calmly offer Him a drink as well.
My pride to stand before you
Naked: down with my pride
I bring you my soul, a tender flower
I bring you my thought, my orphanhood
I bring you my love, my poverty
I’ve come to be caught in the net of your lust
I bring you the mirror that reflects
All the sunsets and all the stars
As you wish them, as your desire longs
To smash it to pieces with your golden hands
To the lands of immenseness: dreamy
Voyages, wishes for a safe trip
But instead of these I want to be
The earth on which you’ll step
With your beloved tender soles
Oh God, who cares for
Humble houses like my own,
Please grace my tiny window
With a nest of swallows.
You, oh Lord, who guide the stars
With hosts of faithful angels,
Make my small flower pot
To fill with lovely flowers,
And give me two white doves
To nest here in my tree
That I may offer them, I promise,
Wheat seeds and water from my hands.
Something between the words
When the skylight opens
Like a trap door
Something obvious and magical
Like a wild female
An apparition
Cawing of gulls
In the fog
Something like perfume
A touch
A sensation
Beyond the senses
Something like light
Between the words
Something like light
The grapevine blooms and spreads its vines
Over the bulrushes and cypress branches
In riverbeds and in crevasses full of rocks
It spreads its fragrance with every stirring
Of the air, as on the hillsides, mountains and the plains
Great swarms of bees rouse from their hives
To drink the vine’s ethereal smells
And forage on its pistils full or nectar
And spread the news in buzzing eulogies.
Girls of the village start their day, following
Nature’s wisdom to their orchards and their groves,
On mountains and plains, with baskets, joyful
And with songs. The gathering and harvesting begin,
And the countryside awakens to their sweat
And girlish scents and every grapevine row
As if arising from the earth brings forth new chthonian fairies…
When I’ll leave this light one day
I’ll meander upwards like
A babbling brook
And if by chance somewhere among
The azure corridors of heaven
I meet angels, I shall speak to them
In Hellenic, since they don’t
Know of languages: they speak among
Themselves with music