George Kalogeris’s most recent book of poems is Winthropos, (Louisiana State University, 2021). He is also the author of Guide to Greece (LSU, 2018), a book of paired poems in translation, Dialogos, and poems based on the notebooks of Albert Camus, Camus: Carnets. He is the winner of the James Dickey Poetry Prize, the Stephen J. Meringoff Award, and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. 

THE EVENING STAR

George A. Kalogeris

I boarded the Blue Line at Aquarium station.
The only empty seat was the one by that young,
Head back, eyes closed, exhausted-looking father
Holding his sleeping child in his folded arms.
It was already suppertime, and the Evening Star,
As Sappho sings, was calling all of the creatures
Home to their mother, through the rush-hour traffic.
The subway was coming out of the tunnel’s mouth
And I was sixty when I suddenly felt
A tiny hand start pulling at my sleeve.
In his sleep the child I never had was reaching
Out for me, while the father I never became
Kept his eyes shut. And all the way to my stop
At Orient Heights, nothing disturbed our dream.

— George A. Kalogeris

Previously published in Issue number 58 of the Harvard Review.