The Sandals

• 1. Με τα πέδιλα μου τ’ άσπρα = "With my sandals, the whites (i.e. "the white ones" or "the white pair"). I added "unsullied" to match the syllable count of the original line and also to underscore how the sandals and the speaker will change in the course of these three verses that encapsulate an entire lifetime.
• 2. Stars and "golden shoulder cords" are elements of high-ranking military uniforms in Greece -- and everywhere else too.
• 3. The Wikipedia bio of this song's composer, Lina Nikolakopoulou, mentions that her father was a soldier. But she also grew up during the years when Greece was ruled by the Regime of the Colonels, when according to Wikipedia, "civil rights were suspended, political repression was intensified, and human rights were abused." Although she composed this lyric many years after the overthrow of the junta, there seems to be an echo of past history (personal and national) in these lines. Note: I do not mean to imply that Nikolopoulou's father was a part of the Greek junta. Anyway, this song is not really about him or the junta, but about the experiences & feelings of the female protagonist, who is characterized by a very different article of clothing i.e. white sandals,
• 4. My translation is "loose" on the literal level because it is aiming not only to reproduce the song's original syllable-count, but also the richness of its end rhymes and internal rhyming. The skill with which the composer has meshed the sounds of her words and her imagery/feelings/meanings is one of the things that makes this song a modern classic in my book.
• 5. The Greek original uses the exact same wording as in the first line of the first verse, but again my translation adds words to bring the syllable count closer to the original line.
• 6. We get a surprise when the speaker compares her nomadic lifestyle to a flower marooned in a pot, but when that idea gets extended to a flower that's a hybrid of laughter and tears (metaphor on top of simile), the effect is tremendous. And these lines also help to set up the next great metaphor (the "wild thorns of time") in the following verse.
• 7. This lyric does not have a repeating chorus the way that many popular songs do. Instead it makes use of a poetic "repetition with variation" strategy in the first and next-to-last line of each verse.
• 8. This time, the first line of the verse has slightly different wording. Με τ’ άσπρα πέδιλα = "With the white sandals." The slight change places word πέδιλα at the end of the line instead of άσπρα, creating the rhyme with βέβηλα at the end of the next line.
• 9. The first two verses were in past tense. In this verse, the lyrics change to present tense.
• 10. This song began as something of a ballad grounded in some specific personal and national history. But here in the third verse, it shifts fully to deal with the human condition in terms that are universal, but also grounded in very striking imagery, of which this final line is the crowning example.