“Greece is the sunburned shores and those light blue
open seas crowned with the spume of the waves.
It is the brunette or tawny blonde girls,
the whitewashed little houses
and the small taverns and the singing at night
while watching the moon by the sea or under a plane tree.
It is our fathers and grandfathers, who,
with a riffle in their hand, liberated our country, and
even going further back than that, to older times,
all of our ancestors, who too had only one thing
in mind – just like us today: the fight for freedom.”
Odysseas Elytis
Extract from the poet’s speech to the Greek people living in Sweden, after the Nobel Prize award ceremony.
