Expectation

Yes, it was all in vain, we knew it and all the news

we received described the abominable horrors in detail:

deeds of friends, acts of foes, merely insignificant and

we paid attention to the song of the chickadee and

to the meadow’s fecund verdure still able to sing amid

the colorful destruction of our childhood as we gazed at

the decapitated houses as if they were gleaming

stars.

Then, we too, threw away our credit cards and free

from unpaid guilt we walked anew yet as desolate

as the earth we were meant to traverse.

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LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

2023 Longlist Announcement

White Nights

      Since then I’ve accepted life without any complaints

like when I’m dreaming; then the executioner comes,

the so called owner and wants to be paid, “with what

money, you miserable man, since I have so many beautiful

ideas to support” I say to him and later, in the street,

it was a beautiful winter night, lots of stars, tears came

to my eyes. I took off my shoes, wrapped them in my jacket

and threw them down the bridge, “don’t tyrannize me anymore,

Anastasia Phillipovna”, I said to her, “it is late, you got

to go back home”

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CRAFTSMAN OF WINE BOWLS

On this wine bowl,    made of pure silver 

for the house of Heracleides,

where excellent taste    reigns—

look, here are elegant flowers    and streams and thyme,

and in the middle I placed    a beautiful young man,

naked, erotic;    he still has one of his calves

in the water—.    I prayed, Oh Memory,

to find you as my best    helper, so that I might make

the face of the young man    I loved as it was.

It was very difficult though    as it has been

almost fifteen years   since the day

he fell, a soldier,    in the defeat at Magnesia.

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