I don’t have an image but I invite you to go on YouTube and watch a video of Yanis Kotsiras singing ” Anigo to stoma mou”. Get the one with the subtitles if you can. The title means “I open my Mouth”  I speak good modern Greek but I am always stumped by songs because, of course songs are poems.  The choice of unusual vocabulary, inverted syntax and strange linking of ideas often draws a blank for me.  When I heard this song tonight, entirely by chance, I was moved to tears.  First, this singer is wonderful in appearance and in his quality of voice.  Then, he is conducted by Theodorakis, with his exuberant style of waving his arms like a windmill.   Finally there is a full orchestra and choir taking part in this song of very engaging melody.  It was, moreover, very rewarding to have sub titles to the song.  I was utterly surprised and uplifted by the wonderful poem that is exposed in this song.  I certainly could never have imagined the lyrical ideas I would hear.

If you follow my blog, you know that I have just finished a book of poetry.  Recently a dear acquaintance of mine was kindly telling me how she was looking forward to buying my book.  She expressed the idea that she was rather apprehensive of trying to read poetry. She asked me if she would be able to understand it.  This idea stuck in my mind and the more I thought about it, the more it struck me as such a modern idea that one could be stimied by poetry, that it was something obscure, something that ordinary people could not understand.  How did this happen?  Don’t little children speak in poetry all the time? Popular songs are blatant poetry, right out there.  Certainly one has to let go and abandon oneself to the freedom of the medium. I found myself surprised, shocked perhaps by some of the ideas in Kotsiras’s song.  On the other hand, there are a lot of other things to be afraid of in this world.  I’m afraid of car crashes, flesh eating disease, losing people I love.  Must I be afraid of poetry too?

Tonight I wanted to share that music with you….YouTube.  Yanis Kotsiras.  “Anigo to Stoma Mou”  sleep well and dream well