For an interview with Aliki Barnstone in this issue.
For a paper on Eva and Chagall
For Aliki’s paper on A Poetics of Witness
“Day Breaks on Andros, 1944” originally appeared in We Jews and Blacks: Memoir with Poems by Willis Barnstone (Indiana University Press, 2004).
“The Blue House” originally appeared in The Imaginary Poets: 22 Master Poets Create 22 Master Poets, edited by Alan Michael Parker (Tupelo Press, 2005) Featured in this issue.
Photo by Katherine Dumas
more poetry
The Blue House
I can see a long way up here
where the blue house is balanced
on a bluff yellow with late summer
fields that extend to the city.
You can see me, for the door
and the windows are open to air.
I sit in a chair and hold a cup
of tea. Or is that you I see inside
and is that me, running downhill,
away from the house, on the path
lined with hip-high wheat.
Looming larger above me
the closer I come is the jumble
of buildings, a white cross atop
each sky-blue dome, the church
enclosed by Byzantine battlements.
Is that figure below the cathedral,
almost too small to see,
raising an arm toward the city
in joy? Or turning back
to wave goodbye to the house?
Why does the modest cottage
seem so isolated from town?
Why is it painted such a radiant blue?
The wood looks like the glass
of the evil eye, and the planes
aren’t square, but ramshackle.
The foundation is shored up
against the hill, on the brink—
I can see the danger now.
And yet the blue house
invites us to look in, enter,
have a seat and drink
a cup of tea that tastes
too beautiful on the tongue
when you exclaim, “Ah, the view!”
The house was not blue.
My memory painted it
the color of the morning sea.
Look, out there, far from shore,
the fisherman is
disappearing in his orange boat
that floats along a gray smear
of light, marring the sapphire depths.
In the impossible pigment
is the day we have to leave
for good, to find other refuge.
No, the blue house was not
a hue in nature, sea or sky
or a precious stone.
It was a color made
by human hands, like a home.
The Destruction of the Jewish Graveyard, Thessaloniki, 1942
- In 1942 the Germans sent 7,000 Jewish mean to work camps, in
which the conditions were abysmal. Dr. Max Merton, the head of the
German military administration demanded a ransom of 3.5 billion drachmas
to release them, 1 billion of which would cancel the confiscation of the
Jewish cemetery. The Jewish community refused to use the cemetery as an
object of transaction but paid 2.5 billion in ransom to bring the men
home. The agreement was signed and the men were released. But 7 weeks
later the 2000 year old Jewish cemetery was confiscated, with the
cooperation with Greek city officials, who for years had wanted to
expand Aristotle University. New university buildings were built on the
land which had held a half-million graves. Every piece of marble and
brick was used as building material: the marble of the tombstones was
used to repair churches damaged in the Italian air raids, as doorsteps
of homes, to construct roads, and to build swimming pools for the
Germans. The men’s homecoming was a temporary reprieve. In 1943 they
joined the 50,000 Jews from Thessaloniki who were deported to Auschwitz.
In the churches with our tombstones mortared in the walls,
let the priests speak in tongues and let them sing
Greek prayer in Hebrew. When the pious kiss the icons,
let their lips touch the lips of great-grandmother Miriam,
while, haloed in gold-leaf and hammered silver, Uncle Isaac
smiles his gentle half-smile. Let the painted wood, the polished
and sweet flesh of baby Jesus be the image of cousin Jak at eleven months,
son of Anna and David, born and died in 1912.
Let Herr Dr. Merten float on his back in his swimming pool, so he won’t see
the inscriptions rippling on the walls, only the sky above him
cloudless and windless and utterly peaceful, the pool compact and still.
From the corner of his eye, he’ll see the maid holding a tray
arrayed with steins of amber beer. Her starched apron is so bright,
a sun shines on her belly. Yet let him have no calm. Let him feel
incessantly the waters of the Danube pull him down
with the 5,000 who drowned on their way to Treblinka.
Let those who cross a threshold carved with letters of the dead
enter their homes and let the smells of cooking enter them:
oregano and dill, lemon and thyme, lentils and tomato, chicken
and chick pea, olive oil, capers, and parsley, sesame seed and honey.
Then they will remember we Greeks starved together.
And beneath the opulent scents of our shared cuisine,
let them smell a little gas leaking from the stove, just a little
poison gas, not enough to harm them in any way.
Then in the distance, maybe they’ll hear a train heading north.
Then again in the distance, they’ll hear another train heading north.
Let the professors and students in the university hear their footsteps
echoing in the marble halls above the bones of half a million of our souls.
Let them hear our music and our dance in their shoes scuffing the floor.
Let the rhythm haunt them with a dream of our history
that does not appear in their books. And let them hear our names,
Zacho, Beni, Janna, ring out beneath their heels, Rebecca, Allegra, Vital.
Let them hear the families, Kohen, Eliaou, Guerchon,
once carved in stone, Russo, Torres, Ben-Ruby.
Let them read our names, Abraham, Bella, Bienvenida, between the words
giving them the knowledge to enter the trades the dead beneath their desks,
Modiano, Saltiel, Angel, once practiced here in Thessaloniki, though their bones
were turned over and over with bulldozers here in Thessaloniki, Mother of Israel.
A Yellow House in Thessaloniki, 1943
You won’t learn how the people vanished
by reading words on the train station plaque
mounted about two hundred meters
from the yellow house beside the tracks.
At a table men drink soda, smoke, laugh.
Only one wants to tell you the facts
of how the occupying Germans ran
the yellow house beside the tracks.
The grand villa was built so long ago
no railway ran through the flats.
Perfect for their purposes that chance
put the yellow house beside the tracks.
They rounded up the Jews at night. The station
wasn’t used, allowing public distraction
when they packed families in the basement
of the yellow house beside the tracks.
Look at that boxcar painted lime green.
It is an Army office now for the lower ranks
says the sign on the door that opened
to the yellow house beside the tracks.
The head-high window is fitted with bars
and a small screen. You see leaves, blue sky in slats.
How could they breathe in there, those herded
from the yellow house beside the tracks?
Upstairs soldiers processed papers. Downstairs
below the planks, they heard the smack
of stamps, and agonized what was next
after the yellow house beside the tracks.
They loaded them into the livestock cars
labeled with the number of people. Backs
aching, they stood headed toward the camps
from the yellow house beside the tracks.
In April yellow daisies do not toil. They grow
in the field, heads spinning, when yellow sun acts
on them. One spring yellow stars were crowded below
in the yellow house beside the tracks.
Day Breaks on Andros, 1944
When all at once dogs bark from the cobblestone
labyrinth in my nightmare and donkeys clop,
more burdened than ever, and the roosters panic
with church bells, footsteps, a screaming lamb,
I think, they know who I am, and they’ll take me away—
at last, they’ve identified me, however narrowly.
Cerberus howls his unwanted welcome;
the doves grunt with the weary souls
in the underworld.
Then just as suddenly I wake, a taste on my tongue
like something spoiled. The red hibiscus flowering
outside the window spins a second among sunrays,
then stops. A gust of wind.
I’m on the island, safe for now.
I reach for my glasses on the nightstand,
put them on, and the room’s colors shift into focus.
Then I turn my head slowly on the pillow,
almost afraid to reassure myself.
My daughter is asleep, there on the small bed
next to mine, her lips moving a little,
her braid coiled along her neck, her hand resting
on the chest of her doll.
I remember it is Easter Sunday and the scream
I heard was the lamb carried off to be slaughtered.
Today I will celebrate, too, posing as a Christian,
and I will call out with the rest, Christos anesti!
Christ has risen.
We’ve been passed over. I allow
sleep to lay its heavy body on mine
and I sink beneath it for a few more hours,
still and dreamless.
Island Elegy
The shopkeeper’s canary warbles a few notes
and I sit up in my chair, waiting for his aria.
Through the transom window
the corner of the neighbor’s house
is a blank piece of paper
held up against sky.
My ear wanders narrow passages
of the village labyrinth,
spiraling streets where at noon
between whitewashed walls
sun and blue sky come to a crescendo.
So much sunlight tricks me
into forgetting a moment the chill
that keeps me indoors, away from the sea.
The canary stops.
I listen in-between
chirps of sparrows who chatter about nothing
except the joy of being in a crowd, I guess.
I heard my friend’s voice too briefly
and strain to hear him
again in the bright silences.
Red Picnic, 1946
We spread our picnic on a red blanket on the beach
and our daughter plays in the shallows where Chagall’s
paintbrush mixes ultramarine with sand.
You hold my hand and I feel my body rising
like a kite above us, above you and me
and our Elefthería’s joyous white splash
and the red tile roofs of the village grouped
across the hills that embrace the beach.
There are no eyes peering out from the eaves.
There are no houses turned upside down.
There’s the carafe of burgundy on the red blanket
And just a little food. A tomato. An end of bread.
So much beauty, to name it feels almost like peace,
like sorrow to name it, too, as if my words
could save the picture of you smiling at us
or the wine warm in my throat, making my hip
curve upward just like your red grin, or my violet dress
fluttering against my skin like many wings,
or our daughter Elefthería in a ruby bathing suit,
her pale fingers waving from the sea,
the deep paint still shining blue and wet.
1949
Then after the Germans left, we Greeks fought
each other and the children were kidnapped to the Balkans
to learn to be good citizens. I saw the sun was too bright
and cut like a blade in the street where a man hobbled
on one leg and a cane. A stillness came from out of time
and stood radiating on the stone, as if the sun, in a brilliant helmet
and resting his bayonet on his shoulder, gloated, triumphant
to shine where a man’s leg had been,
to warm the remaining foot in its boot, to heat the rivets
into two rows of absurd stars glowing on leather
while passersby carried home
bags of tomatoes, greens, and young zucchini.
Too many shoes, I thought.
They would be home before noon, I thought.
We Greeks know to wear a hat, to get out of the heat,
not to get sunstroke. Too often in the aftermath, when I opened
the shutters in the morning, angels crowded the sunlight.
I had to turn my face and close my eyes for a moment—
how could I help it? They were too bright and too thin,
striped cloth fluttering against the blue numbers on their skin.
Sometimes when I bent to put on my shoes, I’d find them
in uneasy sleep. There between the tongue and the laces,
there between the ground and the wire fences,
they were chilled and curled up, knees to chin,
among their crumpled wings, their translucent wings.
How could I put my shoes on then?
And was I crazy to walk barefoot to the sea?
“Where are your shoes?” the Greeks called out,
“Lady! Where are your shoes?”
Maybe I’m not a Greek. I lay down on the beach at noon
because I am a Jew and wanted to feel the hard sand
against my belly. The days the angels came I couldn’t eat,
though I wouldn’t starve as they did. I was empty
and the sun would make me sick. So I was stupid
listening to sea. Feeling the grit against my cheek,
the sand in my ear, I could hear muffled footsteps, orders, carts,
train wheels rolling toward me on waves marching in from the horizon.
The angels stood on my back and told me
the terrible things I didn’t see.
But I can’t remember them so well. . .the voices of the dead,
their shoes, and the sun too bright, too hot to remember.
