So much blue, so close

The blue Adriatic, seen from Santorini, when I was there in 2006.

I have been carrying The Gettysburg Review (Winter, 2013) around with me and when I finally dipped in I was delighted (because I'm a birder) to find a whole group of bird-themed items, essay, fiction and poetry toward the end of the issue.

This one on page 618 reminded me of Greece:

City of Low Houses

The streets flow 
easily into the sky.
Behind the palm trees in the plaza
the sun sets: red
shadows to purple
there, very near.

And above the houses, clouds
---sometimes large stripes
---or cotton ones, with brilliant edges.

---all right there, touching low roofs.

The light lingers on corners
catches on a balcony, then reluctantly lets go.
The sky touches everything
and enters everywhere.

What shall we do with so much 
blue, so close.

Circe Maia 

One of the benefits of this kind of trolling for blog poems is learning about poets new to me. Circe Maia turns out to be a member of my own generation who has been writing poetry in Uruguay for a lifetime. Here is a short description from the website Poetry Daily:

Circe Maia
Circe Maia was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1932, but has lived most of her life in the northern city of Tacuarembó. She is the author of nine books of poetry and is one of the most important voices of the generation that brought Latin American literature to the world's attention. Her collected poems, Circe Maia: Obra poetica(Rebeka Linka Editores, Montevideo), was published in Uruguay in 2011. 

I also find she had a nice hummingbird poem in The New Yorker last year, which I remember liking! It is really wonderful to think about the all the poets working all over the world. So much to learn.

I need to get back to Greece and look for some poets!

But, since I have no Greek. . . .