The Tunnel

A little further and you'll see the lights of your heart coming on along your way and driving back the dark.

The Tunnel is the first English translation of Το Τούνελ, the second poetry collection by the Greek poet Michalis Mandravelis.

In fifty-two poems, he walks from the dark toward the light at the far end. A woman he loves is dragged under by a storm and fights her way back to shore. A son grieves his mother and asks the angels if they have seen her at the borders of the world. The streets empty in a pandemic, the fever burns and the oxygen runs low, and worry moves into the chest and decides to stay. And on the other side there is May and its wreaths, the meltemi, a newborn's first cry, a summer night when the Pleiades and the Morning Star wear the ring, and a hand that holds yours tight.

Tender, plainspoken, and rooted in the rhythms of Greek folk song, these are poems of grief and hope, of family and love, of standing upright again after the storm. Translated by the poet's son, the collection keeps the shape of every original stanza, with a translator's note on the words and customs behind the poems.

A gift for anyone who has come through a hard season, and for anyone with a piece of Greece in their heart.