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2023 Longlist Announcement

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Resurrection

He looks again observes discerns

through a distance that has no meaning at all

through endurance that doesn’t humiliate anymore

the moth balls in the paper bag

the dry grape leaves in the leaky pail

the bicycle on the opposite sidewalk.

Suddenly

he hears the knock behind the wall

that same one coded totally alone

the deeper knock. He feels like an innocent

who forgot the dead.

At night he doesn’t

use earplugs anymore – he’s left them

in the drawer along with his medals

and with his last most unsuccessful mask.

Only he doesn’t know this is the last one

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Old Man

He walks his dog

other side of the street

fierce wind exhausts itself

among tree branches, dancing leaves

when old man suddenly stops

focusing eyes on the ground

he slowly leans

over cement sidewalk

even more slowly he gets up

straightening aching back

holding by it stem a dry maple leaf

which he brings close to

his eyes and observes carefully

turning it to the other side

examines in detail

the curled ribs of the leaf

its hunched body

bereft of flexibility

just like his

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VI

Nights with their tightly shut doors,

in the safety of a dirty bed

in a dream that erases the footsteps

that trample darkness,

tired dream, silent, only with sperm, with saliva

spasmodically shutting the cracks of screams

momentarily,

and again in the lustful warmth of nakedness. 

Days with the totally hidden rust of tears

in the dark brand new suits,

days trapped in the personally won bread

and then, after the end of the celebration,

the harbor master supervises the carrying of its bones;

and from good morning to good morning, from

one silence to another,

the fear —

smoking half a cigarette between two cadavers.

Where they deny me they’ll deny me again,

forgotten, ignored, a burdensome ancient

acquaintance,

a mask ravaged by horror and frost

like change in front of the fear of change

where they sent me away and spat on me

where they smiled at me and then they pretended

the future smokestacks, while all along, it was like

Saturday evenings with their fiancé, and

I was left alone with extended hand amid

the deserted autumns with

only the wind that applied salt deep in the wounds

that kisses opened,

there where we felt hungry together and now

they don’t share their hunger with me

where we ate together and now they don’t

even give me a piece of bread or coal

where we walked together and they now deny me

each step and stone

where we slept and now they deny me sleep

and hope

where we lived and now they deny me the door

of their houses

where we lived and now they deny me the certainty

and patience

there is where I shall go.

Because something that doesn’t vanish

exists in everyone

something exists in everyone that life holds

in its two hands tightly.

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