Vassilis Zambaras


M. I. A.

Miserable wretch that you are, 
You still need not 
Agonize over 
 
A poem's arrival as if it were 
Some long-overdue missive 
From a missing loved one— 
 
It will appear when 
You least expect it and do what 
It’s always executed so well— 
 
Put you out of your misery.



1922: INTRODUCING MR. T.S.E. GIBBOUS, ESQ.

Ambivalent egg-
Head way out there, suspended
In your inner sanctum, why so

Tilting brightly? One might wonder,
Somewhat nonsensically, of course,
You might be reflecting

On the light that’s not
Yours to begin with, and how
Your bang-up saga might end—

Sunny side up or scrambled
With heady green cheese and deviled 
Portions of furtive darkling whimpers soon

To be wasting away in a mooning 
Sea of sublimated tranquility.



PERAMBULATORY ARCHILOCHOS 

To each his own, 
Under blossoming 
 
Dogwood and oak, one 
Person at once poet 
 
And mercenary, out 
Walking through ragged 
 
Paper thin fragments 
Of a cutting mind, still 
 
Trying to get it all 
Together, one fragile 
 
Piece at a time. 



VICIOUS CYCLE OF PROCRASTINATION, or ONE FROG GOOD, TWO FROGS BETTER 

What is never 
Explained satisfactorily 
And always 
 
Left for much, 
Much later is why 
Time after time 
 
You need 
To ask yourself why. 



PRAYER OF AN INCURABLE NOSTALGIC GREEK OPTIMIST 

“It often seems to me that it is better to be asleep than to find yourself without companions 
And insist so. And what can you do in this state of suspense, what say? I do not know. 
And what is the use of poets in a mean spirited time?” 
 
—Friedrich Hoelderlin, (quoted by George Seferis at the beginning of Log Book 1, Roderick Beaton translation.) 

After yet another oppressive 
Day, what with Covid-19 
 
And a society and government— 
Dare I say world?— 
 
In apparent disarray, to wake up 
In the dead of night, say 
 
Four-thirty, and remain transfixed 
There in the darkness unable 
 
To go back to sleep, anxious 
To witness one more glorious 
 
Morning unfolding slowly 
Its dawning 
 
Sheets of blinding light, 
Wide-eyed awake forever 
 
And ever before you 
To your dying day. 



TIME MACHINE IN THE BOONDOCKS 
OF THE SOUTHERN PELOPONNESE, 1959/2022


The hens that once clucked
And cackled near the mucky
Pigpen in the next door

Neighbors’ backyard and laid
Those fresh eggs my mother fried
For our breakfast to the tune

Of the rooster that craned
Its neck to crow before
Laying each chicken in turn,

And the once ubiquitous
Always sad-faced
Ass that brayed

In the vacant lot just
West of our old house
In the torrid afternoon heat,
Its Priapian appendage hanging
Limp as a wet knee-high 
From the long since departed

Neighbors’ sagging clothesline, how
Is it they all flew the coop
And I’m still here?



NONCOMMITTAL NOT SO PLUMB HAYWIRE 

It’s been quite a while since 
Any wide-eyed wannabe 
Poet’s asked me what 

It’s like being a poet and I must say 
It’s no great surprise, seeing 
I’ve been out of the public eye so
 
To speak here in my sanctum sanctorum,  
The boondocks of the southern Peloponnese, 
These past 50 years but if 

Anybody should go to all the trouble now 
To show up on my doorstep and ask me, 
I’d surely tell them to think 

Twice before committing themselves. 
 


MEASURE OF POVERTY IN THE BOONDOCKS OF THE 
SOUTHERN PELOPONNESE, CIRCA 1965 

In a land overflowing 
With a blessèd abundance 
Of olive trees, not having one 
To call your own and where 
Those who had finished 
Gathering theirs had packed up
The bulging sacks, 
Hand-woven heavy
Ground-covering cloths
And gone home, to go there afterwards, 
Get down on your hands and knees 
And salvage the precious few 
Shiny fruits that had overflowed
And escaped 

The nets of the plenty. 



SPEECHLESS BEFORE STARLINGS 

They’ve just dropped 
In from out 
 
Of the heavens 
For the long stretch 
 
Of winter and are strung 
Out murmuring along 
 
The three telephone wires 
Opposite the house 
 
Like notes of a musical 
Score—no, something more like 
 
A long discrete succession 
Of commas taking 
 
Up every available space, 
Leaving no room—period— 
 
For words capable 
Of fulfilling 
 
That bewildering,
Imminent air. 



PORTENTOUS LOCAL MURDERS 

These crows usually 
Like nothing better 
Than to fly 
From house 
Top to house 
Top but most times they 
Prefer to stay cackling 
Out of the way high up 
In the old bullet-riddled village 
Clock tower that miraculously 
Still keeps striking the right 
Time of day—whenever 
That happens, all common- 
Place hell breaks loose, 
And the birds scatter 
Helter-skelter.  That's when 
I like to think the few remaining 
Villagers old enough to remember 
Flash back to those murderous 
Three days of civil strife that sent 
So many souls shrieking 
To the depths of the underworld. 
 
Just as their predecessors did 
More than half a bloody century ago, 
The birds soon return to the bell-tower, 
Where they continue to crow. 



LOOKS LIKE KILROY’S STILL HERE


You, over there—

In the space allotted
It, no matter how

Large or small,
If your life fits,

Write it.



THINGAMAJIG, IF YOU PLEASE, M. FLAUBERT

Oh, dear
Whatever

Just has to be
The perfect mot

Valise one needs
To get a grip on life

These days, so long
As you keep it

Close at hand to throw
Out whenever

You think you know exactly
What the long haul requires,

Duckies.



KEEPING UP WITH THE PAPADOPOULOSES IN SUNNY GREECE

Where once there was 
A sweltering outhouse 

With swatches of news- 
Paper nailed to bare brick 

Wall next to a gaping
Hole, now indoors 

A cutting-edge vitreous 
Fixture and roll 

Of three-ply ass-wipe unwinding, 
Caressing expansive very

Cool marble floor. 
 
NB: poem from the debut issue of Defecation Reflex, which is 
(according to the editors’ mission statement) “an explosive and absorbing new upfront poetry 
magazine designed to blow the britches off the asinine mainstream poetry establishment."



BALL-BUSTER (AFTER ARCHILOCHOS)


Lo and behold, you
Of the high-

Blown ways, do you not
See how low

Your testes have fallen?



THINK AGAIN 

the voice 
you think 

you hear 
inside you 

thinks twice 
as hard 

as you 
and you 

never know 
it hears 

you, too. 

Vassilis Zambaras is Poet-in-Residence in the Boondocks of the Southern Peloponnese.

 
 

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