Three poems
by Liana Sakelliou
[Translation from Greek and note by Don Schofield]
Giannis Scarlatos and Xanthoula Kouneli
He started the sketch upside down.
After drawing the broad lines of a sullen face,
he turned it right-side-up and continued.
He made portraits of the royal family,
their nannies with golden braids.
Sitting in the courtyard,
watching him,
I was enraptured.
He was everywhere—
on the news, in the papers.
Leaders of the Levant were all inviting him
to do their portraits—
the Patriarch of Alexandria
and that one with a monocle.
He was a god and she
a wonder of the world—first chair in the National Symphony,
with a scar on her throat from playing the violin.
After his sudden death in Damascus
(though some say Baghdad),
she became a frightened, insecure woman
who wouldn’t talk to her brothers and sisters.
She talked to us, though,
and showed us his paintings.
Do you like them? What do you see?
We saw anxious eyes
behind glasses
with butterfly frames.
Distributing the Fruit
Scarlatos makes busts but also
full-length portraits
that allow the body to move inside the frame.
On the face he always leaves adventurous shadings.
He and Kouneli spend summers at the Oasis,
where my father, who has gotten to know him,
gives them pomegranates. Scarlatos
became the great portrait painter
of the Palace and the Greek diaspora.
Even our fruit appear in his paintings.
Giannis Scarlatos’s Engagement, 1952
Walking along the beach road,
he stopped at her orchard. She was waiting
among the hundred-leaf roses,
playing strange, cavorting sounds
on her violin.
After she lost him in Baghdad,
she wore a widow’s shroud and black gloves,
kept their rings in front of a small glass
with lemon petals—
a sublime performance.
She closed herself up in the family’s seaside house,
where all his portraits interacted
with her coquettish accessories.
Translator’s Note
Wherever the Sweet Breeze Blows, from which the poems presented here are excerpted, is first and foremost about place—a twelve square-mile island in the Saronic Gulf, the home of the poet’s forbears, Poros. But the poems that make up Liana Sakelliou’s fourth collection are about much more than that. She says she was inspired by “[t]he sea in which I learned to swim, the neighbors that held me so that I wouldn’t sink [...] and the breeze that made them laugh and be tender.” In naming these sources, the poet is identifying three essential aspects of her collection.
First, there’s the sea, an ever-present element, poem to poem, section to section, with its hypnotizing beauty, its power, its wildness, its myths, its constant change, its fluidity, its femaleness.
Second, there are the poet’s neighbors—family members, friends and other locals, all of whom the poet grew up hearing stories about. These neighbors, many of whom narrate their stories in Breeze, are not literary people, but islanders trying to come to terms with what is happening to them, even in the moment they are speaking of their experiences. Patriarchal figures, such as the poet’s grandfather, have a strong presence. And behind them is the eternal feminine: the women of the island, many strong, some weak, along with storied female figures from scripture, legend and mythology.
Third, there is, as the book’s title suggests, a sweet breeze rippling through the poems of Breeze, at times literally, at others figuratively, touching the presence of people, their words and deeds, offering momentary relief to lives whose conditions often change abruptly.
The title also implies the tactile qualities of the language in Breeze—the feel of the Aegean, clinging algae, a sea urchin’s lips, a lover’s touch—and hints at the other senses triggered by the imagery in this collection: the aural (numerous folk songs and other musical references reverberate throughout the text); the gustatory (whole recipes are provided, banquets and monastic meals described); as well as the olfactory (the scent of lemons, herbs and wild roses abounds).
And, most prominently, the visual, as seen through the gaze of a wide array of speakers, sometimes the poet herself, as child, adolescent and adult; sometimes a family member or another local; sometimes historical or mythological figures associated with the island; and sometimes references to the works and presence on Poros of visual artists, including the 19th Century Italian master Raffaello Ceccoli, the 20th Century modernist Marc Chagall, the most important Greek painter of that same century Konstantinos Parthenis, and his renowned contemporary, the portraitist Giannis Scarlatos, poems about whom are featured here.
Born in 1907 on the Turkish—but predominately Greek—island of Imbros, Yannis Scarlatos studied painting and sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts. Among his most important portraits are that of his fellow Greek painter George Iakovidis, his self-portraits, his many paintings of prominent figures in the Middle East, and one of his first wife, the artist Marina Chaikalis. His second wife, the violinist Xanthoula Kouneli, was a native of Poros. After Scarlatos’s death in 1956 she closed herself up in the family’s summer home, dubbed “the Oasis,” and, for the next four decades, until her death in 1995, she kept their engagement rings in front of a “small glass / with lemon petals [...].”
June 12, 2025
Liana Sakelliou is a poet, translator, critic, and Professor Emerita of American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Athens. Former Chair of the English Department and jury president for European literary awards, she has authored 30 books and edited major scholarly volumes on American poets. Her work is translated into twelve languages. She’s received Fulbright, British Council, and Marie Curie fellowships, and represented Greece at major international poetry festivals in France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Palestine, and Serbia.
Don Schofield’s most recent poetry collection is A Different Heaven (Dos Madres Press, 2023). He is a recipient of, among other accolades, the Allen Ginsberg Award (US) and the John D. Criticos Prize (UK). His poems and translations have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Greek National Translation Award. Wherever the Sweet Breeze Blows, his translation of Liana Sakelliou’s Ὅπου φυσᾶ γλυκὰ ἡ αὔρα, is due out from Kelsay Books this coming fall.