Mikis Theodorakis recovering from Heart Attack

Elected Resident, You Accept A Clerk’s Position

By Don Hagelberg

We thank you, Mikis Theodorakis.! We thank you!
For picking up a weapon to fight four footed Nazis,
for doing something which we could or did not wish to do,
for being captured and by being captured, also being tortured,
not giving up the gold and the silver information, paid with pain.
We thank you for speaking out against government thugs,
who beat and tortured you: Twist, twist here! Thud, thud there!
When you gave them neither diamonds nor platinum
with which to pay for sticks, batons, and truncheons,
they twisted “yours” and beat you more all over again.
You stand almost two yards and six inches tall,
what you produced was not wasted on those who torture,
the beaters of cheeks and the breakers of noses.
After the blood and urine of their game, you came

back to return awareness upon them all the more,
uncovering for us the music of past ages and places,
wrapped up in different faces sing, sing, singing,
which we hymn for you here and as well as in another now.
Mikis! Some called you “Traitor” and they said they read the word
from your skin, because you stood up for the cause which was only
yours to fight. You whispered to yourself, “No Civil War for Greece.”
And you spit into your open political hands, you alone,
so that they could glue the islands to the mainland, the mountains
to the seashores and the noisy cities to the silent countryside.
You out-sang their pouts and cries, barbed with fear and hate.
You fathered Greece out of World War Hell, and while not overwhelmingly well, you gave us songs which we know now,
how to breathe together, both “Stranger” and Greek.