August 15 in Tinos

The stark eyes of the old ladies in black, disembarking at Tinos, are fixed upon the church with the sacred icon. They will crawl on blood-stained knees up to the grail. It's the theckapende avgoustou.


It was an ordinary day, in 1965, for tourists such as us.



Tinos, today, remains my mythical backyard.
My Garden of Eden. My eternal paradise.

Dead wood from a windmill in Tinos

The wobbly weathercock of Grecian winters
will no longer indicate the pale blue meridian
from Asia to Africa.
It lies on the arid ground between rocks and snakes.
Alongside, three aged teeth in black oak
will never more bite the Etesian winds, full of salt,
during their long seasons of wild wheat
on the burning slopes of archaic Tinos.
This sacred soil once offered water and bread
to Poseidon and Amphitrite.
The Cyclades filled the sails of Ulysses and made
the warm bread rise, covered in seeds of sesame.
Old toothless windmill, memory of the Aegean.