Μy scant experience with Ritsos has perhaps prepared me for the surprise he seems to pull at the poem's end. The puzzling (Cypriot?) imperfect εγίνεις does, perhaps, reflect that the 1974 crisis in our μικρoκόρη, the farthest-flung island of true Hellenes, was actually becoming the "mother" of our freedom from fascist rule (the 1967 usurpation by the Junta), and so the "Easter bell" of our resurrection. So the unexpected but emphatic θρήνος της ζωής (instead of του θανάτου) stands in the middle of that line — which has the tone and rhythm of the final verse of a triumphal hymn — as a monumental Ritsonian paradox: Cyprus has been a death that gives life, and so courage to that "golden leaf" in the sea.
I still have sharp memories of those fateful summer days of 1974, full of agony and joy inseparably mixed, as in the poem. Stuck on Santorini with a handful of Classics students, Radio Athens silent of words, playing only the music of Theodorakis (for the first time since 1967). That's how we knew something had happened, something terrible and joyful at the same time, as in the poem.