I think the Swedish Academy wished to manifest its solidarity with the living spirit of Greece today.

For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men.

You spoke about things they couldn't see and so they laughed. Yet to row up the dark river against the current, to take the unknown road blindly, stubbornly, and to search for words rooted like the knotted olive tree- let them laugh. And to yearn for the other world to inhabit today's suffocating loneliness, this ravaged present- let them be.

They were lovely, your eyes, but you didn't know where to look.

Leaves like rusty tin for the desolate mind that has seen the end- the barest glimmerings. Leaves aswirl with gulls made wild by winter.

A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested.