Brooke���s poem reads:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there���s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.
With some license and all due respect to Brooke one could
add that is forever New England, America, Italy, Albania, Ireland, Malta France, India, China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa,
Turkey, Greece or whatever region or country from which the
soldier hails.
There is a universal sorrow and lament about Brooke���s story.
It resonates profoundly for me. One laments the tragedy of it
all and the irony, as he died not from an enemy bullet but as
the result of an insect bite on his way to battle.
The next day we climbed the mountain above Brooke���s grave
and were nearly swept across the top by relentless winds. Even
with warm fleece pullovers the slightly higher mountain to the
north was unattainable. At one point we crawled along the
surface to avoid the tempest. Meanwhile, Athens reported an
excessively high temperature for the day.
We grew to respect, enjoy and be thankful for the Meltemi
winds. They heightened our sense of adventure, were a cautionary force and rendered the climate bearable for hiking
during some of the hottest days recorded in recent years. Few
people seem to embrace this point of view and therefore on
our hiking expeditions we rarely encountered other climbers.
HYLAND
46
