For an interview with AlikiBarnstone in this issue.
For a paper on Eva andChagall
For Aliki’s paper on A Poetics ofWitness
“Day Breaks on Andros, 1944” originally appeared in We Jewsand Blacks: Memoir with Poems by Willis Barnstone (Indiana UniversityPress, 2004).
“The Blue House” originally appeared in The Imaginary Poets: 22 MasterPoets Create 22 Master Poets, edited by Alan Michael Parker (TupeloPress, 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
ona bluff yellow with late summer
fields that extend to the city.
You can see me, for the door
and the windows are open toair.
I sit in a chair and hold a cup
of tea. Or is that you I seeinside
and is that me, running downhill,
away from the house,on the path
lined with hip-high wheat.
Looming largerabove me
the closer I come is the jumble
of buildings, a white cross atop
each sky-blue dome, the church
enclosed by Byzantinebattlements.
Is that figure below the cathedral,
almost too small to see,
raising an arm toward the city
in joy? Or turning back
towave goodbye to the house?
Why does the modest cottage
seem so isolated from town?
Why is it painted such a radiantblue?
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,
havea seat and drink
a cup of tea that tastes
too beautifulon the tongue
when you exclaim, “Ah, the view!”
The house was not blue.
My memory painted it
the color of themorning sea.
Look, out there, far from shore,
thefisherman is
disappearing in his orange boat
that floatsalong a gray smear
of light, marring the sapphire depths.
In theimpossible 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 acolor 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, inwhich the conditions were abysmal. Dr. Max Merton, the head of theGerman military administration demanded a ransom of 3.5 billion drachmasto release them, 1 billion of which would cancel the confiscation of theJewish cemetery. The Jewish community refused to use the cemetery as anobject of transaction but paid 2.5 billion in ransom to bring the menhome. The agreement was signed and the men were released. But 7 weekslater the 2000 year old Jewish cemetery was confiscated, with thecooperation with Greek city officials, who for years had wanted toexpand Aristotle University. New university buildings were built on theland which had held a half-million graves. Every piece of marble andbrick was used as building material: the marble of the tombstones wasused to repair churches damaged in the Italian air raids, as doorstepsof homes, to construct roads, and to build swimming pools for theGermans. The men’s homecoming was a temporary reprieve. In 1943 theyjoined 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
Greekprayer in Hebrew. When the pious kiss the icons,
let their lipstouch the lips of great-grandmother Miriam,
while, haloed ingold-leaf and hammered silver, Uncle Isaac
smiles his gentlehalf-smile. Let the painted wood, the polished
and sweet fleshof baby Jesus be the image of cousin Jak at eleven months,
son ofAnna and David, born and died in 1912.
Let Herr Dr. Mertenfloat on his back in his swimming pool, so he won’t see
theinscriptions 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
withthe 5,000 who drowned on their way to Treblinka.
Let those whocross a threshold carved with letters of the dead
enter their homesand let the smells of cooking enter them:
oregano and dill,lemon and thyme, lentils and tomato, chicken
and chick pea, oliveoil, capers, and parsley, sesame seed and honey.
Then theywill remember we Greeks starved together.
And beneath the opulentscents of our shared cuisine,
let them smell a little gasleaking from the stove, just a little
poison gas, not enough to harmthem in any way.
Then in the distance, maybe they’ll hear atrain heading north.
Then again in the distance, they’ll hearanother train heading north.
Let the professors and studentsin the university hear their footsteps
echoing in the marble hallsabove the bones of half a million of our souls.
Let them hearour music and our dance in their shoes scuffing the floor.
Let therhythm haunt them with a dream of our history
that does notappear 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 instone, Russo, Torres, Ben-Ruby.
Let them read our names,Abraham, Bella, Bienvenida, between the words
giving them theknowledge to enter the trades the dead beneath their desks,
Modiano, Saltiel, Angel, once practiced here in Thessaloniki, thoughtheir bones
were turned over and over with bulldozers here inThessaloniki, Mother of Israel.
A Yellow House in Thessaloniki, 1943
You won’t learn how the people vanished
by reading words on thetrain station plaque
mounted about two hundred meters
from theyellow house beside the tracks.
At a table men drink soda,smoke, laugh.
Only one wants to tell you the facts
of how theoccupying Germans ran
the yellow house beside the tracks.
The grand villa was built so long ago
no railway ran through theflats.
Perfect for their purposes that chance
put the yellowhouse beside the tracks.
They rounded up the Jews at night.The station
wasn’t used, allowing public distraction
when theypacked families in the basement
of the yellow house beside thetracks.
Look at that boxcar painted lime green.
It is anArmy office now for the lower ranks
says the sign on the door thatopened
to the yellow house beside the tracks.
Thehead-high window is fitted with bars
and a small screen. You seeleaves, blue sky in slats.
How could they breathe in there, thoseherded
from the yellow house beside the tracks?
Upstairssoldiers processed papers. Downstairs
below the planks, they heardthe smack
of stamps, and agonized what was next
after the yellowhouse beside the tracks.
They loaded them into the livestockcars
labeled with the number of people. Backs
aching, they stoodheaded toward the camps
from the yellow house beside the tracks.
In April yellow daisies do not toil. They grow
in thefield, heads spinning, when yellow sun acts
on them. One springyellow stars were crowded below
in the yellow house beside thetracks.
Day Breaks on Andros, 1944
When all at once dogs bark from the cobblestone
labyrinth in mynightmare and donkeys clop,
more burdened than ever, and theroosters panic
with church bells, footsteps, a screaming lamb,
I think, they know who I am, and they’ll take me away—
atlast, they’ve identified me, however narrowly.
Cerberus howlshis unwanted welcome;
the doves grunt with the weary souls
inthe underworld.
Then just as suddenly I wake, a taste on my tongue
like somethingspoiled. The red hibiscus flowering
outside the window spins asecond among sunrays,
then stops. A gust of wind.
I’m onthe island, safe for now.
I reach for my glasses on thenightstand,
put them on, and the room’s colors shift into focus.
Then I turn my head slowly on the pillow,
almost afraid to reassuremyself.
My daughter is asleep, there on the small bed
nextto mine, her lips moving a little,
her braid coiled along her neck,her hand resting
on the chest of her doll.
I remember itis Easter Sunday and the scream
I heard was the lamb carried off tobe slaughtered.
Today I will celebrate, too, posing as aChristian,
and I will call out with the rest, Christosanesti!
Christ has risen.
We’ve been passed over. I allow
sleep to lay its heavy body onmine
and I sink beneath it for a few more hours,
still anddreamless.
Island Elegy
The shopkeeper’s canary warbles a few notes
and I sit up in mychair, 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 myfriend’s voice too briefly
and strain to hear him
again inthe bright silences.
Red Picnic, 1946
We spread our picnic on a red blanket on the beach
and our daughterplays in the shallows where Chagall’s
paintbrush mixes ultramarinewith sand.
You hold my hand and I feel my body rising
likea kite above us, above you and me
and our Elefthería’s joyouswhite splash
and the red tile roofs of the villagegrouped
across the hills that embrace the beach.
There are noeyes peering out from the eaves.
There are no houses turnedupside down.
There’s the carafe of burgundy on the red blanket
And just a little food. A tomato. An end of bread.
So muchbeauty, 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 upwardjust like your red grin, or my violet dress
fluttering against myskin like many wings,
or our daughter Elefthería in aruby bathing suit,
her pale fingers waving from the sea,
thedeep paint still shining blue and wet.
1949
Then after the Germans left, we Greeks fought
each other and thechildren were kidnapped to the Balkans
to learn to be good citizens.I saw the sun was too bright
and cut like a blade in thestreet where a man hobbled
on one leg and a cane. A stillness camefrom out of time
and stood radiating on the stone, as if thesun, in a brilliant helmet
and resting his bayonet on his shoulder,gloated, triumphant
to shine where a man’s leg had been,
towarm the remaining foot in its boot, to heat the rivets
into tworows of absurd stars glowing on leather
while passersby carriedhome
bags of tomatoes, greens, and young zucchini.
Toomany shoes, I thought.
They would be home before noon, I thought.
We Greeks know to wear a hat, to get out of the heat,
notto get sunstroke. Too often in the aftermath, when I opened
theshutters in the morning, angels crowded the sunlight.
I had toturn my face and close my eyes for a moment—
how could I helpit? They were too bright and too thin,
striped cloth flutteringagainst the blue numbers on their skin.
Sometimes when I bentto put on my shoes, I’d find them
in uneasy sleep. There between thetongue and the laces,
there between the ground and the wirefences,
they were chilled and curled up, knees to chin,
amongtheir crumpled wings, their translucent wings.
How could I put myshoes on then?
And was I crazy to walk barefoot to thesea?
“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 tofeel the hard sand
against my belly. The days the angels came Icouldn’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 hearmuffled footsteps, orders, carts,
train wheels rolling toward me onwaves marching in from the horizon.
The angels stood on myback and told me
the terrible things I didn’t see.
But I can’tremember them so well. . .the voices of the dead,
their shoes, andthe sun too bright, too hot to remember.
