Some more poems by ....

... Nicholas Samaras ...

Saint Stephen, Past Jaffa Gate

What was important
was to stand
straight as an exclamation point
and let earth and heaven rain
down on me.
What was important
was to be ambitious only for truth.
What temple could enclose that, what raiment
disguise such a simple witness:
my frail body seized with speech,
my neck pulsing its latticework of blood,
a gunny tunic, the color of dust,
knotty drawstring, sandals,
hair thick with Christ?

The stiff-necked Sanhedrin ground
their teeth at me, carried me on a canopy of coarse hands
past Jaffa Gate, the Street of the Chain.
The sky tumbled over itself, jagged patches of light.
Claws of elders rent my sackcloth,
threw me to the dung path of their fathers.
Hotly, I felt the stings, the puncturing,
my body opening like dark flowers,
salty water warping my sight.

Through a haze, I saw one applauding.
Let him stave off the light today.
Let Saul later see the vision of his own blindness.
What was important now was to
open my ragged arms to the mob’s refusal,
to underline an Orthodoxy,
give my body to the earth’s testament.
Each rock and stone chanted Hosanna
as it sang into my flesh (sad parchment),
pursed the closing air, whistled me home.


Easter in the Cancer Ward

Because it has been years since my hands
have dyed an egg or I’ve remembered
my father with color in his beard,
because my fingers have forgotten
the feel of wax melting on my skin,
the heat of paraffin warping air,
because I prefer to view death politely from afar,
I agree to visit the children’s cancer ward.

In her ballet-like butterfly slippers, Elaine pad-pads
down the carpeted hall. I bring the bright bags,
press down packets of powdered dye, repress my slight unease.
She sweeps her hair from her volunteer’s badge, leaves
behind her own residents’ ward for a few hours’ release.
The new wing’s doors glide open onto great light. Everything is
vibrant and clattered with color. Racing
up, children converge, their green voices rising.

What does one do with the embarrassment of staring
at sickness? Suddenly, I don’t know where to place
my hands. Children with radiant faces
reach out thinly, clamor for the expected bags, lead
us to the Nurses’ kitchen. Elaine introduces me and reads
out a litany of names. Some of the youngest wear
old expressions. The bald little boy loves Elaine’s long mane of hair
and holds the healthy thickness to his face, hearing

her laugh as she pulls him close. “I’m dying,”
he says, and Elaine tells him she is, too: too
much iron silting her veins. I can never accept that truth
yet, in five months, she’ll slip away in a September
night – leaving her parents and me to bow our heads, bury her
in a white wedding gown, our people’s custom.
But right now, I don’t know this. Right now, we are young,
still immortal, and the kids fidget, crying

out for their eggs. Elaine divides them into teams;
I lay out the tools for the operation.
I tell them all how painting Easter eggs used to be done
in the Old Country. Before easy dyes were common,
villagers boiled onion peels, ladled eggs
into pots so the shells wouldn’t break.
They’d scoop them out, flushed a brownish-
red, and the elders would polish and polish

them with olive oil, singing hymns for the Holy Thursday hours.
The children laugh and boo when I try to sing. The boys swirl
speckles of color into hot water, while the girls
time the eggs. When a white-faced boy asks from nowhere
if I believe in Christ and living forever,
I stop stirring the mix, answer,”Yes, I do.” I answer slowly
and when I speak, my own voice deafens me.
The simple truth blooms like these painted flowers

riding up the bright kitchen walls. I come
to belief. I know that much. Still, what a man may
do with belief demands more than what he says.
Now, the hot waters are a stained, rich red. The eggs have
boiled and cooled. To each set of hands, Elaine gives
one towel, three eggs. I pass the pot of melted paraffin,
show these children how to take the eggs and dip them in
and out. While the wax hardens to an opaque film, we hum

Christos Aneste and the room bustles, ajabber
with speech. Holding pins firmly, we scratch out mad
designs where the color will fill. Small, flurried hands
etch and scrim the shells. Everyone’s fingers whorl
and scratch in names, delicate and final.
Edging the hall’s threshold, an April’s allow-
ance of sun filters through tinted windows. Faces furrow
in solemn concentration. Looking to Elaine, my thoughts clamor

for what is redemptive in illness, for having
a Credo to hold these people to me. Etchings
done, everyone immerses the waxy eggs in the pooled
dye. We ooh together when transfigured eggs are spooned
out, wiped and dried on the counters. Soft wax
is peeled gingerly, flecked away; more oohs for the tracks
of limned lines, testimonial names.
We burnish the shells with olive oil for a fine sheen

For a moment, the cultivated, finished eggs hush
the room. Then, every child goes wild in a rush
to compare, they show the nurses, each
other. The bald boy taps my waist, Lined up and speech-
less, they present me with a bright, autographed
egg, communally done. Elaine makes me close my eyes and laughs
when small limbs push at my back to follow
her. They shove my hand in the cool, wet, red dye. The hollow-

eyed girl squeals till tears streak from her laughing.
Another child cries, “You’ll never get it off!”
And today, I don’t want to. Today,
we’ve painted eggs a lively color, not caring
about the body’s cells and the cells’ incarceration.
I lift my arms to embrace Elaine and dab her nose and chin.
And my hands are vivid red. My hands
are bloody with resurrection.

and we are laughing.


The Psalm of Then

Then, the Lord heard me in the wilderness of my soul.
Then, the lost place of me became clear.
Then, I recognised distraction for what it is.
Then, I was freed from the desert of diversion.
Then, I was moved to the green oasis within me.
Then, the still voice of the Lord was as the depth of water.
Then, I could cease the constant music in my head.
Then, I could move beyond myself and the noise of myself.
Then, I could hear the smallness of my own voice.
Then, the still voice of the Lord was as the depth of water.
Then, the lost place of me became clear as a cascade.
Then, I could hear the bass of my name.
Then, I heard the Lord in the wilderness of my soul.
Then, stillness and stillness and stillness sang.


Hinge of Centuries

I
We walk through a doorway of
white light, a white light
like the light of salt,
a sodium light, a gathering
of radiance that both burns and purifies.
By our century, we have all become
anonymous, feeling about for our truest names.
We go so far into exile, our exile turns
back on ourselves.
There had to be a place where room ran out.
A good city that feels like a village.
A place to live in.
II
Walk through this.
Into the late hours gathering the glimmer light
of a chapel's narthex.
In an ancient, sleeping city of music,
leaning against the votive stand
will be the staff of a holy man,
a ruby and gold-gilted crozier
to cut the dark in four.


The Vocabulary We Could Not Use

I could not speak the name of the place,
the stone building that gave
more silence to the field.
Led into a room of wooden houses, I was made
to choose. Venetian bronze. “Permaseal” plaque.
Let this shelter last.
In a velvet room, a business suit
used offensive phrases.
These words are not for us. They are useless.
In a basement chamber, they gave
a vial of burgundy, some white cloth
heavy in my clutch.
Left to view, wash, and dress him alone.
It is not his body.
It is him.
The blank face upstairs pushed a text of barbed wire,
white paper to sign and our names
were the only flowering we could recognize.
I could not bring myself to read the morning's print.
The quiet section, the photograph and headline hurt.
The lettering, ugly with fact.
A sound from my throat made
arrangements. An airline voice asked,
“Will you be traveling alone?”
We went to the orchard of stones, and stood politely.
Everyone there gazed elsewhere. I looked
down to see blurred, black clothing on my body.
Something moved in the air, above our heads.
The trees swayed with it. I felt it on my cheeks.
A beautifully grey hairy-faced man moved his mouth, and I heard
nothing.
Someone put an object in my hands.
Cut stem. Cupped blossom. Thorn.
My finger bled with the residue of petal and smell.
What has this to do with us?
I dwell on this plot until darkness gathers
and the ground cools in slumber.
Stand. The blue wind goes sobbing.
It is inconsolable.
You cannot console it.
What you embrace is the emptiness and the vocabulary
you cannot use, the silence,
the air paternal.