Light on her feet, dressed in black, her footsteps couldn't be
heard at all.
She went through the arcade. The lantern was out. As she climbed
the stone stairs they called out "Halt." Her face
was steaming in the darkness, all white. Under her apron
she was hiding the violin. "Who goes there?" She didn't answer.
She stood there motionless, her hands high, holding the violin
tightly between her knees. She was smiling.
June 15, 1968
by Yannis Ritsos
tr. Edmund Keeley
painting by Magritte
Greek poet Yannis Ritsos wrote many poems such as this one in the years of a dictatorship in Greece from 1967 to 1974.
I knew a Greek student at Knox College in the mid-1960s. His name was Spyros. I recall hearing that someone who'd known him at Knox had visited him in Greece during these later years. Spyros showed him the secret room in his house where he hid his books.
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