Live Encounters Greek Poets & Writers September 2026
The Sculptor and His Stone, poems by Spyros Vrettos.
Translated from Greek by Aristi Trendel.
The Sculptor and His Stone
Light falls on him like leaves
and rouses him.
He wakes from light, he wakes from leaves.
He wakes and the light lies on the stone like flecks.
Shadows stretching sideways
sharpen the sculpted stone
and reveal the persistent ant
as it is also roused from its hole,
wholly in the light,
casting a shadow like ten bodies.
And look—the hawk snatches the sparrow
from the highest thorn of the spiny broom.
Five meters away from him.
And look—the spark from the stone
at the blow of his hammer.
Half a centimeter from his eye
the stone breaking.
He strikes the stone gently
to cajole it.
He strikes the stone hard
for from there the hidden will emerge.
He strikes a little aside from where he meant
to avoid the ant.
So the nose will come out slightly askew
the mouth slightly askew
the speech slightly altered
that the sculpture will speak.
And look—the hawk again swoops down
to take his stone.
And look—he holds on to his stone.
He hews it.
With the spark he burns it.
“Will the hawk feed its young with fire?”
He goes back again to the dry-stone wall.
A thousand forms carved in stone.
Which one will he choose to sacrifice?
(Unpublished)
War Correspondent in a Lyrical Rapture
All the horror took place in a plain of wheat.
At the beginning he was looking at the air,
where nothing stirred.
Therefore, at first he must have been looking at the sky.
Then he lowered his gaze, and now, yes:
he saw the air,
where everything was moving.
And where the air was swaying the wheat,
it revealed one hidden figure after another
one almost completely, one only a little.
Of one hidden figure he saw half the body.
Of another he saw only the legs.
Of one he saw the face and a little of the hand.
Of another, just a little of the face,
and a hand, as if enormous, grasping the blood.
The wheat before them was golden
and those hidden among it were blue
as though once again he were looking at the sky
as though once again he were in need of some art.
So many hidden dead all around
with no sound beforehand.
As though a lyrical rapture had cut him off
and he refused to see or hear.
But fortunately there was blood
staining the blue into something else
staining the gold into something else
until everything seemed to be
on a plain of red wheat.
And fortunately he came back
and he will speak of all this
because soon there will be no plain.
They will burn even the red wheat.
And of the dead they will say
they were only people who were hiding,
who went elsewhere to hide among other stalks of wheat,
which before them are golden,
and they among them blue.
But the blood will be there again.
(Unpublished)
© Spyros Vrettos
Spyros L. Vrettos, (Lefkada, 1960) studied Law in Athens. He has published ten poetry collections, a selected edition of his poems, three volumes of essays and literary studies, and two collections of short stories. His first five poetry collections were translated into English by Philip Ramp and published as Collected Poems (Shoestring Press, 2000). A selection of his poetry was published in Italy in a translation by Massimo Cacciulo (Il postscriptum della storia, Atelier, 2005). His poetry collection Negotiations (2019) was translated into Italian by Chiara Catapano (Trattative, puntoacapo, 2022) and received the Italian Critics’ Prize Sandomenichino 2022 as well as the International Literature Prize 2023, awarded by the Italian Cultural Institute of Naples. A selection of his poems has also been published in Spain in a translation by José Antonio Moreno Jurado. His poems and short stories have been translated into many European languages. He is a member of the Hellenic Authors’ Society and the Circle of Poets.