Friday, May 1, 2009

Excerpt from 'At Home' by William Plomer


Acute pleasure can hardly be described. A little before midday on a morning in early summer I was swimming a good way out in the bay of Phaleron with an inhabitant of Athens of my own age with whose physical beauty I had become infatuated. In the warm sun and the light breeze a small boat with a sail came gliding and prancing past. In it was an old fisherman. When he saw us he asked if we would like to climb in for a sail with him. We said yes, climbed in, and settled down, and while he guided the lighty dancing boat over the sparkling wavelets and glanced back at us now and then with the fatherly playfulness of an old triton, we happily embraced one another with naked arms that the sun had quickly dried, and kissed the saltiness from one another's smiling lips. This, I thought, is happiness - to be young, to be healthy, to be free, to love and be loved in the sun, in the radiant light, flying along over the water in the flawless visibility of early summer in the Aegean...

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