Kostis Palamas Does Not Attend His Own Funeral
The whole of Greece rests in this coffin. — Angelos Sikelianos
One day, the wind leaves the body. For good.
If we’re lucky, it releases. Clings to the leaves. To the silver veins of the olives.
Then the next day it is February 28, 1943. Forever. Sometimes for good, sometimes not. 100,000 Greeks coming out for the funeral. For Kostis Palamas’s funeral. Ignoring mandates of the German Occupation. Angelos Sikelianos reciting his poem, “Palamas,” at the service, reminding the world that The whole of Greece rests in this coffin.
Then the wind shifts. The leaves shift. The earth seems to almost weep its night dew back into the air. Takis Sinopoulos scuffs his feet and cries out. Miltos Sachtouris, unable to bear it, stays in his apartment and frantically rips a toenail, then lights a cigarette he forgets to smoke. Yannis Ritsos strokes the lump in his throat, remembering a donkey he kept as a child—and his weeping when it walked the stone path with him and died.
Then Palamas is placed. In the grave. His grave. Though it is not Palamas. But the body of Greece. The whole of it and more. Mumps of mud and leaves. Polio of grapes and sheep. Broken bones of the sea. Restless and wrecked. Swollen from a swastika of bees.
And 100,000 Athenians sing the Greek national anthem, sounding like vowels from the owl’s mouth. One man shouting, Long live the Liberty of spirit! The crowd responding, Long live Liberty! — as if wind-swept in the salt of olives.
And the luck of the leaves cries out, We are the leaves, the luck of the leaves. Leaves that shape the wind and welcome you back.
And Kostis Palamas drifts, then sits on a hill. A hill of trees. Reciting his poems against the Occupation — certain salve of Greece that is its history and its disease.
And the wind shifts. The breath shifts. And he is gone. Then he is not gone. Kostis Palamas is everywhere at once. In the Greeks. In the Germans. In Aristotle and Sophocles. In the ships at sea. In Odysseus tied to the mast. Crying out. Straining the ropes. Hearing a song he longs to tongue and seed. As Palamas searches for the notes. For the words. And the words within those words. As he searches for his belovèd Greece. The whole of it. Resting. Moving. Caught somewhere between the old world and the new. And he is there floating. In death. And more death. In the confusion of the in-between.
/ / /
“The monumental Greek poet Kostis Palamas lived from 1859–1943. Considered one of the central poets of Greek modernism, Palamas exerted a tremendous influence on Greek letters and was cofounder of what became known as the New Athenian School (also known as the Palamian School or Second Athenian School). He was informally recognized as the ‘national’ poet of Greece.” — George Kalamaras