Poem of the Week | April 06, 2026

“The Kidnapped Child” by Nicholas Samaras is our Poem of the Week.

***

The Kidnapped Child

What do you really want to know?
I came from a dark place called

before-memory-begins.
No one ever called me by my real name.

I never answered to the name they called me.
The only recourse was to walk on the rules:

you don’t ever talk about the torture.
There will always be worse torture—

a distant hole where the heart goes,
to which no calling sound reaches down—

not this knowledge,
not any beforelife.

What do you want to know?
What good will it do?

The first thing you learn
is that nobody believes you.

***

Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the “Island of the Apocalypse”), and at the time of the Greek Junta military dictatorship (“Coup of the Generals”) was brought in exile to be raised further in America. He’s lived in Greece, England, Wales, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Jerusalem, thirteen states in America, and he writes from a place of permanent exile. His first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His current book is American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014). He is completing a new manuscript of poetry and a memoir of his childhood years lived underground.