"Songs of a Thousand Years"

By Paul Campanis

Songs of a thousand years can be wiped out by one generation that forgets. Regeneration has to be
regular or we lose what we need to go on with. It is an historical
imperative to sing.
In America we barely glimpse the extent to which we are displaced
persons. My poems or songs are reminders of a truth. The apotheosis of the
ordinary, the daily. We need sing common songs about common things and
people. There is nothing more. I nearly totally lack common sense. But
you know the wash of modernity is strong, and physical and personal needs
are met, at the expense of the spirit and the art. We may go back to visit
but the trip is really one way for the Astoria confectioner and the Boston
pizza boy.
So all we can do is celebrate Greekness. Say a poem, take a coffee
under the plane tree in the plaza and just look out at this paradise the
world is. You sort of rework your mind and think Greek. You never have
to be one as it is just a way of seeing and that is it. Through me a
culture speaks, calls, screams and says lines of all the poet I speak about.
In all this the shepherd is on duty and stays with the flock and is silent
and looks about with a dreamy look always. We never die, just keep on
truckin'. In Nisiro I met a gentleman at the Loutra, the healing spa who
quoted Cavafy to me at length. Tears in his eyes.