An Introduction to Modern Greek in South Bend, Indiana, 1967

 

                                                For Vassilis Lambropoulos

                                                Artemis Leontis

                                                And Kostalena Michelaki

 

Quince and pomegranate? Sage? Rosemary?

I didn’t know anyone who even knew

what those things were, so at Benner’s Market

on Mishawaka Avenue, right next

to our new temple—the Gospel Center

United Missionary Church—I bought

pistachio nuts—A Product of Greece—

and Welch’s White Grape Juice. I carried them

like holy food to Potawatomi

Park where at picnic tables below oaks

I read Zorba the Greek. I was fifteen

and there had never been a loneliness

or a longing as exquisite as mine.

I wandered over dusty hills in Crete

slaking my thirst with Welch’s. I sauntered

through dark alleys in the medieval town

on Rhodes—built by the Knights Hospitaler

after Saladin conquered Jerusalem—

and smelled souvlaki grilling over fire,

eating pistachios to satisfy

my hunger. When lake effect snow began

to drift down from the sullen skies above

South Bend, I discovered Odysseus

Elytis and learned that in those poems

was some new place. But I walked there

in the sun on a beach sprinkled with white

and black pebbles, with a slightly older

dark-haired olive-skinned woman who whispered

just above the Aegean’s gentle wash:

E thalassa, thalassa, thalassa.

 

 

 

                                                                                    Appeared in Notre Dame Review

                                                                                    Summer, 2004