#MIDDLEBURY
Lesvos
Christopher Bakken
Fishermen out before dawn. None returned.
I asked you why they left their nets behind,
but you were looking out, across to Assos,
and maybe didn’t hear me in the wind.
We both wore the same ironic mask:
one blue eye floating upon a white sea.
On that balcony, beside the iron table,
a geranium held on for dear life.
All day we watched waves capsize in the rain.
Our shoreline here: the other shoreline’s mirror.
Those aren’t nets, you said after a long time,
but mounds of sodden jackets and lost oars.
Stray cats sheltered in the light of the cafe.
We didn’t know the others huddled there.
The wind changed course and tried to explain
by shaking the geranium, but words sank
in the crossing, so we heard under water.
When I opened my hands, my palms burned,
as if they’d been lashed by splintered wood.
In sleep, you told me, we have been rowing.
Truth is, no one here knows where we’re going.
I begged you not to leave, but you’d already
slung a orange scarf over your wet head.
There aren’t enough boats to carry them,
I shouted, so there’s nothing left to do.
There is, you said. I’m going down to see.
About this poem
“I have spent a lot of time over the years in Molyvos (a port town on Lesvos) and also in Assos (just across the water, on the Turkish mainland). In the past two years, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 refugees drowned while attempting to cross the stretch of water separating those two places. Many of my Greek and expatriate friends have volunteered on Lesvos or in refugee camps on the northern border town of Idomeni. What they have described is heartbreaking. The poem registers my sense of regret for not being there, if only to bear witness.” – Christopher Bakken
About Christopher Bakken
Christopher Bakken is the author of “Eternity & Oranges” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). He directs writing workshops in Thessaloniki and Thasos, Greece, and teaches at Allegheny College in Meadville, Penn.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Christopher Bakken. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
