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By Nicholas Samaras

After a while, we stopped counting the dead

and let the body of the wind push us into departure.

Nothing civil about war, everything numb with distance.
The only real choices were the ones with consequences.

We left our towns in silhouette, the moon in crescent,
its rind of light behind us, silver-wet and rippling.

In the end, all we wanted was to understand.





About the author:

Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the "Island of the Apocalypse") and, at the time of the Greek Junta ("Coup of the Generals") was brought in exile to be raised further in America. He's lived in Greece, England, Wales, Brussels, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Jerusalem, thirteen states in America, and he writes from a place of permanent exile. His first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker, won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His current book is American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014). He is completing a new manuscript of poetry and a memoir of his childhood years lived underground.