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![Pensioners line up outside a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece.]()
![Pensioners line up outside a National Bank branch in Athens, Greece.]()
..........................................Pensioners line up outside a National Bank branch in Athens. Bank branches around Greece are open today to allow pensioners to receive a small part of their benefits: photo by Milos Bicanski via FT Photo Diary, 1 July 2015
Pensioners line up outside a National Bank branch in Athens: photo by Milos Bicanski via FT Photo Diary, 1 July 2015
The blood swells now
as heat swells
the veins of the inflamed sky.
It is trying to go beyond death,
to discover joy.
The light is a pulse
beating ever more slowly
as though about to stop.
George Seferis (1900-1971), from Summer Solstice, in Three Secret Poems (Athens, 1966); translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard in Collected Poems (revised edition, 1995)
\ A pensioner, center, is squeezed as she waits outside a National Bank branch to receive part of her pension in Athens: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 1 July 2015
A National Bank branch manager in Athens, center, gives pensioners priority tickets as they wait: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis,/Reuters, 1 July 2015