By Kostas Kolintzas
Manoli, why did you dye your children blue? Did you miss Asia Minor so much, its night sky, and the windswept Black Sea--did its memory take your breath away? After you arrived, I watched you bury the dye vats into the ground. You were so meticulous, ready for all the business that never came. Then, one desperate day, when you dipped your children into the blue bye, how you adjusted the aviator goggles to protect their eyes, their smooth cheeks turned upward as if waiting for a kiss. You had stubbornly carried the goggles from your homeland; from your abandoned stone house your father’s father had built alone. The goggles were stuffed in a burlap bag along with the candlesticks and silver trays, along with the hand decorated table covers you have never used.
Try and explain your reasoning, Manoli. The constable is waiting. Thick is your tongue and the sugary dialect that’s hard to understand. Tell the constable about your transported seeds that do not take to the arid ground. Smoke your pipe and mumble on about our poor
government's gift; land filled with rocks and snakes. Explain to him how your leaning shack, how the African winds, how the howling wolves keep you up at night. Then clap your hands to bring your sons to attention.
Tell the world about their dead mother, and then retell the constable of how, when you work in the fields, the boys wander off. Tell it so you embarrass them, how you desperately whistle for them. Whistle again. With your muddy boots crawl through the thick brush wildly
looking for them. We have all seen you in your mad state, heard your heavy breathing. And now, their blueness catches all our gazes from miles away. So right you are, Manoli. Even from the town square we see them. Look at them everyone, aren't they like fallen pieces of
sky? Do they not sparkle? Come everyone, our new afternoon entertainment consists of two angels. And who can stay away? The word has even reached other villages, and every late afternoon a new crowd, early arrivals to get the best seats. How they clap and wave their white
handkerchiefs. They cheer to get the boys' attention, and when the boys climb the pine trees, when the wind bends the tops back and forth, how the soul swoons.
