The End of 18

By Enon Harris

Introduction:

I wrote this describing some things that happened the time I got stuck in Athens for a month in the winter of 1990.  I missed my plane and couldn't get another flight out because everyone was leaving the Mideast as the US prepared to go into Iraq. I had been studying Greek language, culture, literature and archaeology in Chania on Crete with a small group of 17-19 year old American students. I worked in an Orthodox church with a Scottish priest in the mornings and class in the evenings. It was great - the food, the classes, the landscape. I was even one of the 12 people present at the first opening of an intact 4,500 year old Minoan tomb with unbroken pottery and complete skeletons.

Athens was harder - everyone else left, I ran out of money. The students at the Polytechnic near my hotel had taken over the university for several weeks and seemed to be trying to repeat the change of government they achieved in the '70s. On the other hand, my cheap hotel was filled with foreign models and had a rooftop patio with all Athens spread out below. MTV played "Groove is in the Heart" and the cafes played "Tom's Diner". I fell in with  crowd of international vagabonds, hash-smoking anarchists, marginal artists, street acrobats, fire eaters and mad beggars who formed the Yang of our customary plaza, Exarchia - with the Yin supplied by the heroin market on the other side of the square... solemn monochrome men, grey skin in black leather.

Most nights at sundown some of us would go down the hill for the riots. The burning university furniture kept the teargas down. The molotov cocktails kept the police lines at bay while their shields and clubs kept the overt destruction contained - but slowly chaos seeped through the cordon into the city.

Late at night, though, the conversations were magical and the silences even more so.

Here's the poem I wrote about the experience. Every word is literally true.

The End of 18

Morrison’s poetry, no allegory then ...

I begged for bread in Athens,

Walked winter streets

Always looking down for fallen coins.

I saw mad, cold teens

Filling bottles with benzene

And stopping them with rags

As clouds of teargas drifted

Over flaming

Heaps of seats of students and

Chairs of professors -

Doors slammed in my chest when

"This is the End"

Blared from

Shabby galvanized trumpets on poles

Through heaps of debris and

Huddles of holes.

Brickbats, billy clubs,

Weeks of riots and wreckage

but no one would say why.

Even then, friends - placeless people -

Would pass the cider at night

In our plaza on the hill

And share bits of lives.

Souls, even -

Or maybe just dreams

...if there's a difference.

I remember what a friend told me

one silent, dark hour,

Of his forbidden nighttime vigil

Alone on the Acropolis -

Hidden in a space like a tomb

Under the temple of Athena

A temple old when her Parthenon

was only being planned ...

Her moonlit vision seen - unsleeping

Standing at the threshold ....

© 2004 Enon Harris

All rights reserved. Used with permission