Two Poems from the Greek Underground
VazamBam
by Vassilis Zambaras
“Site”
the
white
moss-
covered
wall
spotted
with
red
poppies
and
what
we
gather
are
bullet
holes.
“Reprisals”
You’ll find that many of your compatriots have already bought property in the Mani; in some villages, the Germans outnumber the Greeks 3 to 1.
(2001 real estate brochure)
1. 1941
Occupying forces
Emaciated forms
Yellowed sheets
Worthless paper.
2.
Back to the wall
Their faces become
Muzzled abstractions of anthems
Circumventing circular
Definitions
Of executions.
3.
Circle of martyrs’
Eyelids undying
Blank distraction
Allocating slots for headstones
Grounds a lime foundation.
4. lie of the land
Quarry of white
Washed marble
Statues
Of limitations.
5. vein of ignorance
Where does time run to
When it runs out?
6.
The Germans picked up
The first men they came across
And when they had gathered
Enough to fill the ratio,
Shot them.
The ratio was thirty Greeks
For every German killed
By the Underground.
7. Initial Skirmish, Mani, 1961
Barren
Black-scarved hags
Captured
By Leicas.
8. 2010
(overheard in passing)
“. . . of course you exaggerate, my dear. One mustn’t forget
The Germans have always respected the traditional
Architecture of our country.”
MELIGALAS, Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—10/11/10—1941-1944, German occupation of Greece—an estimated 700,000 civilian deaths due to war and repression*; 1943-1949, Greek Civil War—figures vary but about 160,000 deaths, half communist, half government forces and civilians.
Perhaps it’s a blessing I don’t have any memories of Greece before I was taken to the US in 1948.
*700,000 may not seem like much but, at that time (1939 census), it constituted 11.5 percent of the population—the highest percentage of any other European country—a very high price to pay, indeed.
Vassilis Zambaras
Vassilis Zambaras According to such reliable inside sources as The Weekly Hubris’s Publishing-Editor, VazamBam aka Vassilis Zambaras is all of the following, and more, in an order no one can vouchsafe as definitive: a publishing poet who writes every day of his life; a hugely successful father (and a not-so-very-successful local political candidate); a professor of English as a Foreign Language, with portfolio; a Renaissance Man of many skills, useful and not-so; a fount of information about his particular corner of his birth country; an unstable and utterly unique mix of Greek and American, American and Greek; and the man fortunate and wily enough to have made off with Messenia’s loveliest and most talented local daughter as his child bride. Besides being all the aforementioned, other more dubious sources have also reported seeing him hanging out at the corner of vazambam.blogspot.com—in the guise of a “new old kid on the blog, with an occasional old or new poem written off the old writer’s block.” Author Photo: Pericles Boutos