! ! A Brief Tribute To George Seferis, Poet Poem by Michael Shepherd

When the gods allot
a time, a place, to those so mortal
mortals whom they love to test,

is it a greater gift they give to poets,
to live in a land of honeybees
and sun and sea and heroes sung, a land
assured, content, of gods and marble,
temples, amphitheatres, history,

or in that land in times of tragedy,
starvation, misery, division,
internal war and conquered servitude?

Ultimate, the irony – how can the gods
think up such things? – to be
ambassador, to represent a land
from which to have been exiled half a life;
exiled from within and exiled from without.

The love the gods bestow (the Chorus cries)
is terrifying; strange; to be hard learned.