It’s summer late 1940, before Mussolini and the
More efficient Nazis invaded Peloponnese.
I see the bright young man you were then, herding
The family’s goats to the high green pastures, nourished by
Morning mists and wildflowers.
All day their bleating belled timid notes among the peaks,
Beginning and ending a loose congregation that roamed
Past and about. You brought homemade bread, fetta,
And cured olives for lunch. In the stilled silences
You studied to take the entrance exams for medical school.
Come evening the procession streamed home with you.
Suddenly everything changed. Your country was at war,
You put on the uniform when the Germans arrived—
There’s an ancestral photograph of you wearing it
With a long fixed gaze—when the Luftwaffe gouged an airfield
In the bucolic valley below the village to invade Crete,
Destroying your family’s olive grove.
You spied for the British as family and friends were brutally
murdered, making your home in tents in the bleak mountains,
Though sometimes underground, you drilled and detailed faithfully
On reconnaissance as if studying for midterms.
Barren long years of hardship. No frills. It was a hard blow,
But you could be hard too and kept your wits.
Then you followed the distant call to America to thrive.
Your children were first in their class and became what you could not.
Though in you is another lesson, the loves and sorrows,
The living and the dead in equilibrium, all the strains of passion
As if a fresh wind tunes through sunny peaks, its ring and pitch
And silences still consort.
Along the iron roads, the long winding trail and the mountains
Softened by spring rains still bring ample nourishment.
Uncle, who I admired since you stood up to shake hands,
From whom we learnt the trade. A blessing for every year.
Stephen Cipot
Garden City Park
