In 1996, when I first came across the poem "Aposticha mystika for an orthros at the hermitage of Apollos" by the Greek poet Odysseus Elytis, I was so stricken by the imagery and liquid meanings of Elytis language that almost automatically I came up with a melody for cantor in response to a couple of stanzas in the middle of the poem. The music was composed in the Byzantine cantorial style, a style I remembered from my childhood years when I served as a "droner" at the psaltery of our parish church, The Metamorphosis of Our Savior. In this poem but also elsewhere, Elytis's language takes advantage of the implicit semantics and resonance of choice words which reference the age-old Greek Orthodox hymnology. He does so in a way that, even though his intention is not a religious one, he can send the Greek reader towards a reflex association with that tradition, for no other reason than to perform a sharp cognitive pivot to an entirely different semantic association. Elytis is a conjurer. He intuits where you will involuntarily go with your associative mind, so he meets you there so he can bounce you towards a completely different direction, invariably catching you by surprise. (The fact that he is already waiting there for your arrival, speaks volumes to his intuitive poetic genius.)