See I'll read a couple of poems I wrote when we were in Greece.
My wife and I spent a year in Greece, two or three years ago.
And we lived in a village called Serenades which is
about 25 miles South of Athens.
Let's see.
Is there anything you need to know?
Well, maybe I'll just read one.
I don't like these poems too well.
This one is called "The Cross to the Peloponnese."
And in Serenades, often when the nights were clear enough,
you could see the lights of the Peloponnese twinkling
across the Gulf.
And there's a reference to soccer in here,
I went with my landlord one time over to the Baker's wife's
house to watch the Greeks play the Czechs on television,
and I couldn't understand what was going on.
I don't know anything about soccer,
and she couldn't speak English but she kept feeding us
these sweets and coffee.
And my landlord said that she had the hots for him
and that's why she was doing it.
I don't know about that.
But anyway, in the palm I make the Czechs the Turks.
[CHUCKLES]
The last decent man alive died today in Serenades.
No one remembered what he did or how he came to be so good.
He died today at 10 past three, the final tick
of the soccer match.
Shepherds complained of a winter wind,
the butcher laid down his lamb.
Some mothers say he wrote poems, stunning poems on rare paper
about, you see, they can't be sure,
the man was sadly foreign.
Flies walk against the window pane.
A dog barks so sure of itself, the Aegean
mocks these mourners gathered in his room.
Nobody knows how he died or why.
He had no enemies, no friends, no murderous need
to throw himself against the rocks.
Fishermen light their nets, crude against the Peloponnese.
In serenades, the men are certain.
Greece beat themselves, not the Turks.