Darmok on the Ocean, and: Kailash, When It Rises, and: Exile Dossier Nicholas Samaras (bio) Darmok on the Ocean My bearded grandfather is a gesture of no life here, says wade into this horizonand keep looking far above salt. My bearded father is this raft who pushes me off the worldand hangs on, breathing. My seaweed father is blue and white froth churning. We paid everything for this refuge.Our bodies white-streaked, adrift with wet clothing in summer. Papou's beard said there is no exileif the world is together. No exile if tan earth connects. Borders are only people manning gates, languageinside out. My mother is this ocean I sputter, stirring in this blue quenching we can't drink. The misplaced horizon:my grandfather's angel hair, my mother's veil, my baby brother with the souls of fish traveling. We aresmall hands. Small lives to arrive. [End Page 85] Kailash, When It Rises The white froth of sea surfkills with its rising. Any water is an oceanif it's deep enough to drown a soul. We were helpless helpers on an island and there were refugee bodies in the blue water—floatinghyphens of inarticulation—their small faces equally blue. We couldn't leave them.We pulled their dead weight by their arms to the pebbled shore—they were that close. We lifted them into our smallest caiques,the lapping tide still rising,the numbers of their bodies still rising. I had to be there, helping and not helping.I held my breathat the wet magnitude. I cradled the dead baby's body from her mother's arms.I held her small body until it dried and turned into wind. [End Page 86] Exile Dossier What country are you from? The country of Other, making us citizens of nowhere, who are everywhere yet never marked on any census, we who are stereotyped, even the best chameleon of us still undefined, shading the map's edges. What languages do you speak? I speak with your own accent. I mimic my way to acceptance. I can say "friend" in ten languages. I say, yes, sir, for the office and the files. I say, hey, man, for the street. What occupations have you held? I was born a very small child. On an emerald island, I was thatched. On Patmos, I was origin in apocalypse. Then, I became the ocean, the rolling sickness of motion, the blue expanse of movement. After that, I became a tradesman of air, transparent, not acknowledged, barely felt except when a cyclone, the stirring into frenzy. What occupations have you held? You don't have enough paper. In Turkey, I translated. In Kosovo, I picked grapes for a living. In communist Knin, I was stoned for walking down the street with a priest. In an unnamed rail station, I rode a train's freight boxcar into Beograd, pressed with fifty other bodies—not missing the irony of that. In a necklace of islands, I became earth who slept on earth. There were other countries after that, connected and disconnected, in which I wandered until I could find sleep or occupation. If you are to be recalled … Recalled? Only remembering frees me. The passages through. The houses that became houses. The arms of my father that became home. If you are to be recalled, who do you have to sponsor you? Who said I want to stay, even after years here? Who said I ever became [End Page 87] you? I only became indistinguishable from you. I only became myself on the inside and, yes, I contain multitudes: countries, states, the succession of sixteen schools in twelve years. The litanies of addresses. I am here for the time being, prisoner until I move again. Ocean, air, earth. Only remembering frees me. Only commemoration understands. [End Page 88] Nicholas Samaras Nicholas Samaras is the author of Hands of the Saddlemaker (Yale University Press) and American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland Poetry Press). He has lived through ten countries and thirteen states, and writes from a place of permanent exile. Currently, he is completing a new manuscript on exile, displacement, and...
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May 3, 2024
Stefano Baccolo + 1
Open Access