I just watched Mama Mia

At the end of this post is a version from the short lyrics of the Greek anthology of Philodemus – whose poem I translated on the beach where Mama Mia was filmed. Watching the movie now, I realise it is all about an ageless lady. My little poem seems uncannily appropriate.

My companion has skin that cannot take too much sunlight, and yet we needed the sun and we needed the sea.  I hit upon the Pelion, that Greek peninsula dominated by the Pelion mountain that sweeps down towards Skiathos with the Gulf of Volos to the west and forested bays on the eastern, Aegean side.  These forests, traditionally the stamping ground of the centaurs, cover the peaks and come right down to the eastern seaboard; forests of ivy-shrouded plane trees and chestnuts, offering plenty of shade.  In his Georgics, Virgil speaks of the giants piling Mount Ossa on Mount Pelion, in three vain attempts to scale Olympus, each attempt thwarted by the thunderbolts of Zeus.

There are still plenty of thunderbolts.  These great mountains south of Olympus itself cause accumulations of cloud with accompanying storms to be expected, but I like this sort of a climate.  It’s similar to that I’ve experienced in the armpit of the bay of Biscay – on the Costa Verde; a big storm every ten days or so, which clears the air and causes brilliant waves, and then balmy, blue perfectly Mediterranean weather (but not overwhelming heat) and a sea that retains its warmth.  Just be warned that on that Atlantic coast, because of ice-bergs borne along ocean streams, the sea has a decent temperature only in this stormy corner – Llanes, just west of Bilbao, is the perfect village for a holiday, as many a Spaniard knows – but get down as far as Portugal and the sea is surprisingly cold.

Not so the Aegean east of Mount Pelion.  Here the sea is warm, however wild the waves.  The coves are rocky or bordered by the forest, with Milopotemos boasting a picturesque arch in the rock that takes one through to another delightful cove which has caves beneath its crags, one the size of church’s nave.  However rough the sea, the currents push the swimmer back towards the shore, so even toddlers can be happily tumbled by the surges and find themselves rolled back onto the sand.  On the beaches of the Pelion there is always plenty of shade, so my friend had a jolly time of it while I got respectably brown.

Above Milopotemos there is the village of Tsangarada, clinging to the steep hillside; its main square dominated by a two thousand year old plane-tree, the largest in Greece, a tree very pleasant to climb.  In one corner of the square can be found “The Lost Unicorn” – a well known hotel run by an English woman.  This boasts a garden with a nook in its bar located in the core of another enormous plane tree and a very fine cuisine, with generous portions of deliciously flavoured lamb and veal – a little pricey perhaps – but well worth it. Jazz nights and evenings of classical music are offered there every week.

All around the village, and in all the villages in the region, there are other restaurants serving delicacies such as battered slices of courgette, aubergine fool, souvlaki and of course fresh seafood, and there are also very reasonable cafes and restaurants at the greenly translucent water’s edge at Milopotemos and at most of the other beaches, as well as in the tucked-away village of Damouchari, where Mama Mia was filmed – a village right on the shore – of course the café owners there regale you with stories about Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan.  It’s got a small harbor and a ruined castle on a promontory and a big beach beyond the promontory.  Kayaks can be hired if one wishes to paddle oneself around its craggy headlands crowned with thyme and rosemary.

But the highpoint of our stay was our trip on the single-track, narrow gauge railway that winds through olive groves and over ravines from Lehonia on the shore of the gulf up to Milies, one of the highest villages on the western side of the mountain.  Its little train is kept going by enthusiasts and only runs at the weekend.  It’s difficult to book too, and worth getting to Lehonia an hour before departure to ensure a seat in one of its four wooden carriages – carriages with “balconies” at either end, which you can stand on as you travel, just as in a western movie!  Some of the ravines are crossed by viaduct-style bridges with arches.

All these, and an ingenious metal one as well (where the circular track is continued over a rectangular section of bridge), were designed by Evaristo De Chirico, the metaphysical painter’s engineer father, who had already built railway lines in Bulgaria.  The track up to Milies was begun in 1895 – when his son would have been seven.  It was only completed at the very beginning of the twentieth century.  It enabled people in the high villages to get down to work in the factories of the coast.  Evaristo also built the art deco extravaganza which is Volos railway station.

Giorgio De Chirico was born in Volos.  I realised that I knew the arches of these viaduct-like structures from his works, which include tall arches as items in themselves.  Often the little train will be puffing along somewhere.  The factories are there as well.  Now I see the paintings in a new light, not just as juxtapositions of classical relics, bananas and rubber gloves.  I imagine that he admired his father, who died in 1905.  His son was studying art in Athens then, and moved to Germany to continue his studies in 1906.  One can sense the melancholy of this departure.  The little railway crosses one ravine which is rumoured to contain the cave of Chiron, the centaur renowned as a healer and educationalist, who taught the hero Jason (before he set off, from what is now Volos, to bring back the Golden Fleece).  Now that is a magical background in which to have been brought up!  It suggests a strong autobiographical aspect to these metaphysical works.

We alighted at Milies and worked up a sweat ascending a steep, cobbled alley to its main square shaded by plane trees, where there were pony rides on offer – and this could be great trekking country on a pack-saddle – accompanied by stunning views of the gulf and the mountains beyond.  We now had three hours of exploration time before the train took us back down to the coast.  My companion wondered where the loo might be.  I indicated a low doorway in a squat white building at the edge of the square.  Seemed like people were going in there – presumably to have a pee.  Minutes later my friend came back to our table.  No, it was not the loo, it was a church.  In fact it was a church disguised as a loo!  Seriously.  It was camouflaged to look squat and insignificant because no one wished its function to be detected during the Ottoman occupation.

Inside, this church is decorated floor to ceiling with exquisite murals – including a dramatic day of judgement with good deeds and bad being weighed in the scales.  Just as the cave of Chiron in the ravine below now has a chapel built at the same site, the church in Milies square is said to have been built on the site of an altar once dedicated to Hermes with his winged sandals – which could be why it is now dedicated to the two winged archangels.  Above the six cupolas of its interior, amphorae in the roof (six big urns to each cupola) ensure that sound stays within the building – and these create a fantastic acoustic.  My friend was asked to bang her heel on the floor in the centre of the nave, and when she did the whole nave boomed, as there is also a base acoustic provided by a hollow floor.  Later we were to explore other churches – notably one in the village of Kissos which is another outstanding example of Orthodox mural painting and ikons – with wonderfully elaborate wood-carving on its iconostasis which abounds with double tailed mermaids and other pagan inventions.

The Pelion is resistance country, wild as the “Maquis” – famous for its freedom fighters – heroically opposed to all occupations.  Its villages suffered both from reprisals under the Turks and during the 2^nd world war – which makes the current political climate all the more poignant, when our landlady told us that she can only withdraw 60 Euros a day, and a German finance minister seems to be spearheading the current programme of “austerity”.  The villages also suffered from a devastating earthquake in 1955, freezes that killed off the olives a year or so later and bouts of heavy flooding, but what comes over to the visitor is a resilience in the face of vicissitude, and a willingness to extend the warmest welcome.  This is a magical land, and well worth exploring.

Flights:

Small Planet has flights to Volos every Friday morning.

Accommodation:

The Lost Unicorn Hotel, Tsangarada

Villa Giorgi, Tsangarada

And many others – and finally here are some poems inspired by our stay in the Pelion.

x

SPLIT PENINSULA

x

The edge of the road is air

– Or on its nearside a ditch that can swallow your wheel.

Goats drift casually over the hairpins.

A pack-saddled horse and a mule

Plod their way up a red dirt trail.

It leads to the highest apple groves and apiaries.

x

Gnarled claws walled against the slope,

The olives sweeten on this sheltered side of the range

Harbouring a cypress-punctuated gulf.

There the myrtles ripen on a plain

Peopled by civilized Lapith lookalikes

Who dance a sacred dance before they dung their crops.

x

Far more steep, the escarpments to the east

Sponsor rare game and deciduous forest

Hung with urchins, raising dappled trunks;

Its lynx tracks leading under canopies

To the rugged stamping grounds of anti-social centaurs.

Turbulent seas here give birth to split-tailed naiads.

x

Hunting’s good but husbandry precarious,

Its apples sour compared to those of the west,

Its olives bitter as aloes.

The hairy-haunched ne’er-do-wells

Raised on these eastern crags

Dream of the light-skinned girls on the gulf side

x

Or from departures far from the lynx’s lair;

Girls with wavelike, honeyed hair

And long shanks utterly bared by their hot pants.

Girls who have come from the sky,

From thirty thousand feet at the very least,

Jetting in from Gatwick or from Manchester.

x

ANTS ON PELION

Some envious giants piled Ossa

            on top of thick-forested Pelion.

Nothing to them, this uprooting

            that balanced the one on the other.

x

Now there was an arrogant project

            to rival the fall-vaulting railway bridge

Built to span far apart crags

            by De Chirico’s engineer father.

x

Their mythical mountainous high rise

            was three times attempted. According to

Virgil, their aim was to conquer

            the cloud-shrouded heights of Olympus.

x

But leave the cheese out on the worktop

            for anything more than a tick

And a squadron of ants will be onto it:

            scavengers, quick opportunists.

x

Observe how ubiquitous under

            our sandals they nip to and fro

On their evident chores comprehensible

            only to them between hoof-designed

x

Higgledy-piggledy cobbles

            in alleys that lead us up villages

Perched above olives. These miniature

            goings on gave us the notion

x

Of lofty Olympians occupied

            somewhere remotely above us.

Their largely indifferent view of things

            may be implied from our own.

x

Are the everyday doings of mortals

            as much of a tedious mystery

Unto the Gods as the ways

            of an ant may appear to a man?

x

LOCKER

x

Ages sigh.

People twinkle, pushed and pulled

Without much animosity,

And yet they throw stones at it.

Others teeter gradually

Towards its inconsequential edges

Or fall asleep to its lullaby.

It hardly does anything,

x

Just fizzes gently at the shingle,

Swells, sucks and subsides.

People hunch.

It rolls in, balancing

On scallops.

They shiver at it damply on their towels

As it has its say,

Consigning repetition to a shell.

x

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY

x

1. The Free Courtesan

x

She who sets the town on fire,

Faridah, that up-market whore

Whose breath has the odour of gold for

Those in whom she ignites desire

Lay beside me naked all night long

In my dream, gave herself for far less than a song.

No longer need I scrimp and save to pay

For her, nor shall I go to pieces

When I’m skint, now that sleep eases

The situation, giving me free access to the bint.

x

                                                                                                Anonymous

x

2. The Lamp

x

I am Frank’s present to Nancy;

A lamp in sterling silver,

Faithful confidant of night’s

Entanglements, and now

I splutter at her bedside,

Witnessing the utter filth

She gets up to, while I guess

Frank must be lying awake

Somewhere, burning as I do.

x

                                                                                                Statyllius Flaccus

x

3. At First Sight

x

From the beach, O Paphian Cytherea,

Cliff saw Nikki bathing in the blue.

In his heart dry coals were set afire

By the wet girl.  Poor Cliff was shipwrecked too,

While she was welcomed kindly by the shore.

When face to face though, both at once

Found happiness within each other’s reach,

Since his supplication on the beach

Was met by your affectionate response.

x

                                                                        Poseidippus or Asclepiades

x

4. Meryl

x

Ok, she’s over sixty,

But still she boasts that head

Of lustrous hair,

Walks tall, still with no need of a bra’,

Still her skin seems milky,

Not a wrinkle anywhere,

Claims the advantages and the allure

Normally thought of as youthful.

Anyone who dares admit his horniness

Will say of her years, Well, I couldn’t care less!

x

                                    Philodemus – my version written on Damouchari Beach –  where they filmed Mama Mia.

x

  

5. The Offerings

A Cyprian wine and some treacherous toasts

And that deft massage Sebastian

Offered her next sent Dorothea to sleep.

And now she hangs up at your shrine

The sandals that slipped off,

The bra’ he unclipped

And the knickers still scented with sex:

Witnesses to what she lost in dreamland

And what he crudely took in an underhand

Manner – after he had told her to relax.

x

                                                                                                             Hedylus

x

6. Gardening

 x

Rhoda was told not to kiss me.

So instead she kissed her knickers,

Then she sent them over.

Love worked like an irrigation channel

Sending its torrent to some other spot.

I sucked it up there ardently

Then sent the knickers back.

Both of us felt a little less parched

By this forwards backwards trip.

The knickers seemed like some ferry

Plying from lip to lip.

x

                                                                                                Agathius Scholasticus

x

MEDITATION ON POETRY

x

In terms of what verse does or is

Supposed to do, you shouldn’t really expect

Hermes to be a poet. His job

Is to communicate. If you are going to be

x

Offered instruction from Above,

Do you want the message aestheticized

As some sort of end in itself?

Wouldn’t you prefer, simply, to get it?

x

Arachne knows her task is

To connect – spinning her threads

Out across space, just as the contractor

May erect his web of girders,

x

Bridging a gorge or lifting a stream

Of heavy traffic over some widening estuary,

Getting everything across – if not with Mercurial éclat

At least with the speed of freight.

x

“Lost” in a ravine, here in steep Magnesia,

The old bridge is difficult to locate.

There is a weathered sign in Greek,

But what if you don’t speak it?

x

After a U-turn followed by a guess,

Beneath our feet, not somewhere up on high,

We have its stillness to ourselves

Give or take some geckos and a butterfly.

x

A span of moss-toned stone

Dangling strings of greenery,

Built perhaps to carry a mule-track

On along the coast, back in some previous time.

x

Hewn rocks wedged together form

An arch across a rivulet that weaves

Its way between green boulders and the debris from a storm;

The sky above screened by the plane-trees’ multipronged leaves.

x

Everything more or less smothered in ivy:

A bridge appreciated for being so deeply

Hidden within its chasm. Nobody

Actually uses it to get from A to B.

x

AEGEAN

x

The fridge shudders and goes silent;

The faint rush of a wave below

Overwhelmed by three hundred and sixty degrees

Of fiddled knees round our balcony.

x

Some nights there’s the “tonkle” of occupied

Goats but not tonight when the leaves

Say hush to the breeze and while the moon

Moves directly over the sea itself,

x

Her subtle light reflected

From cove to cove in a stream connected

To our line of sight.  Shadow crisp

As day delineates the bottle.

x

Drunk on the moon as much as on the wine,

A poet searches for his final line.