Poetry

The following four prose-poems are excerpted from Tasos Leivaditis’ work “Dark Deed”, originally published in Greek in 1974. They reflect the dark years of the military dictatorship in Greece which seized power in a swift coup in April 1967. For the next seven years, until democracy was restored in July 1974, the country experienced strict authoritarian rule, the suppression of political freedoms, and the imprisonment (and often torture) of opponents. Nevertheless, the news we were waiting for arrived, and it could have, perhaps, changed our lives if it weren’t in an unfamiliar language, one that was understood by some who