The landscape lured the willing feet, the thoughtful mind. It was framed by asymmetrical elevations, sometimes reminding a cradle, sometimes, a fortress. The foundations of man exist on those mountains and it’s men that bear those mountains on their shoulders. Following the path from the mountains to the city is a voyage into the light. A peculiar, dark light. The light that the Cyclopean man sees. And you stand in his shadow and feel the blaze of that inner eye. You walk over the incandescent dead and greet their ghosts in silence over the fiery mist. You feel a stillness so intense that for a fraction of a second you hear the great heart of the world beat and it’s then that you understand the meaning of sorrow and of happiness alike.

Yet, as the mid-day heat to fields that long for showers, as keen, untimely frost on opening flowers, so do the fickle turns of the path cement streams of hope. Aveering, restless, buoyant wind comes swiftly and resurrects old thoughts and memories. In fluttering whispers, it brings again those sunny hopes that would not stay, the fears whose shadows yet remain.

Each careless breath, a promise of glorious hue. I linger still on the quiet shore, soothed by the far-off chime of rippling waves, which scarcely seem to flow, steal on their course with a gentle lapse. Sweet hour, sweet sound; wistful I turn away, chiding the briefness of that closing day. How often do we yearn for buoyant hours in view, how often with late repentance to discern, our light is scattered, too. Till, taught at length, we slowly learn to prize the calm in whose clear depths its light unwavering lies.

Spring might be late this year, but it will come slowly up the way. Indifferent to the concerns of man, once more, she will unfurl in the warm breezes her ever-green banner of hope to a jaded and skeptical world. Her light, beaming, dazzled by its novel youth, will find us unprepared. But no one and no place can escape her, for she is ubiquitous and in her coy and tender way, she comes to all. A true conflagration of colourful fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze of growing, faces of people wondering what fountain of fire are they among this wild gyration, their spirits tossed, afraid to feel like shadows buffeted in the throng of flames, gone astray and ultimately, lost. She speaks with countless voices, but she strikes the same bright, confident notes in all. ‘Dare me!’, she whispers.

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas, The Black Sun