Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

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Raven

                                             In memoriam Edgar Allan Poe

Years like wings. What does the motionless raven remember?

What do the dead remember near the roots of trees?

Your hands had the color of the falling apple.

And this voice that always returns in a low tone.

Those who travel focus on the sail and the stars

hear the wind and beyond the wind the other sea

like a closed conch near them, they hear nothing

else, they don’t search among the shadows of the cypresses

for a lost person, a coin, they don’t question

looking at the raven on a dry tree branch what it remembers.

It stays motionless over my hours a bit higher

like the soul of an eyeless statue

a huge crowd has gathered inside this bird

a thousand people forgotten, vanished wrinkles

vacant embraces and laughter never completed

works stopped halfway, silent stations

a heavy slumber of golden drizzle.

It stays motionless. Stares at my hours. What does it remember?

There are many wounds in the invisible people, inside it

suspended passions yearning for the Second Coming

humble desires glued on the ground

children killed and women tired of the daybreak.

Does it weigh down the dry branch, does it weigh down

the roots of the yellow tree, over the shoulders

of the other people, the strange faces

who don’t dare touch a drop of water though sunken in the ground

does it weight down anywhere?

Your hands had the weight of hands in the water

in the sea caves, a light weight, without thought

with the motion that we suddenly push away an ugly thought

laying the pelagos to the far end of the horizon to the islands.

The plain is heavy after the rain;

what does the motionless black flame remembers against the gray sky

wedged between man and the memory of man

between a wound and the hand that injured it black spear

the plain darkened drinking the rain, the wind subsided

my own breath isn’t enough, who will shift it?

Within the memory, a chasm— a startled breast

between the shadows struggling to become man and woman again

between sleep and death motionless life.

Your hands always had a movement toward the sleep of pelagos

caressing the dream that slowly ascended the silky spider web

bringing into the sun a multitude of constellations

the closed eyelids the folded wings…

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POEM BY PAULINA PAMPOUDIS

BEETLE

Work

of exquisite beauty

expertly crafted

exoskeleton

impenetrable diamond chest

complete armory

expensively equipped

highly analytical vision

thousands of megapixels

precise sensory antennae

strong claws

lining of the wings  

precious, silky

perfect

fully armed

for the day’s struggle

broken

in the beak of the bird

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VI

I’m not only who you see, who you know

I’m not only who you have to learn;

I owe each part of my skin to someone

if I touch you with my fingertip

a million people touch you

if one of my words speaks to you

a million people speak to you —

will you recognize all the bodies that make up mine?

Will you find my footsteps in a million footprints?

Will you recognize my movement among the flow of people?

I am what I’ve been and what I won’t be

my dead cells, my dead acts, thoughts

return each night to quench their thirst in my blood.

I am who I haven’t been yet;

the scaffold of future is set inside me.

I am who I’m supposed to become;

my friends around me demand, the enemies forbid.

Don’t seek me elsewhere

only look for me here

only in me.

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Doubt

And in secrecy I celebrated my nuptials

as per tradition, a rooster always called

the dawn and I, the anointed,

was meant to mound the Kore

before the branches of trees

connected to form the cross

symbol of my catharsis eternal

toughened and invincible who I had become

years that I had spent in my mind’s purgatory

was it in my previous lifetime or in my dream?

And truly, I was meant for the sacrifice

and I searched for purity to the point

of relentlessness and I longed for

the beautiful to the point of regression

traumas of my youth turned out

to be a lifetime effort to my apotheosis

resulting in my wisdom

like the esoteric anchorite’s

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Χρυσόθεμις//Chrysothemis

Μέσα σε μια μεγάλη κάμαρα ακατοίκητη, κρεμόταν από χρόνια,
ένας παλιός καθρέφτης με χρυσή κορνίζα. Στην κάμαρα εκείνη
δεν έμπαινε κανείς. Πετούσαν ανάκατα εκεί μέσα
ό,τι άχρηστο και παλιωμένο — λάμπες, πολυθρόνες, κηροπήγια, τραπεζάκια,
πορτρέτα πατρογονικά κι άλλα καθαιρεμένων στρατηγών, ποιητών, φιλοσόφων,
ανθοδοχεία κρυστάλλινα με παράξενα σχήματα, τρίποδες, μπρούντζινα μαγκάλια,
μεγάλες προσωπίδες, γύψινες, μετάλλινες, κι άλλες μικρές από μαύρο βελούδο,
ταριχευμένα κεφάλια ελαφιών κι άγριων ζώων, ταριχευμένα
πολύχρωμα πουλιά, γαλάζια και χρυσά, με γαμψά ράμφη —τ’ όνομά τους δεν το ’ξερα—
κρεμάστρες, πανοπλίες, κονσόλες και βαριά παραπετάσματα
σε πορφυρό συνήθως ή βαθυπράσινο χρώμα. Ήταν εκεί το καταφύγιό μου.

The old mirror with the gold frame hanged, for years, in

a big unoccupied room into which no one ever went. They

used to throw everything useless and old in there: lamps,

armchairs, candlesticks, small tables, family portraits,

and other portraits of retired generals, poets, philosophers,

crystal vases with strange shapes, tripods, bronze heaters,

big clay, or metal masks, and other small masks made

of black velvet, stuffed deer heads and other wild animals,

colorful birds, light-blue, golden with talons and beaks,

I don’t remember their names, hangers, armories, consoles

and heavy partitions in purple or dark green color. There

was my refuge.

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Roaming

As if blind we roamed the land for endless days and long nights

we seek a sign for our meaningful penitence. We commenced

the new Exodus under the loneliness of the lit sky, absent

ancient lights, for years we followed blind men or the half

blind, those others who thought they knew it all. The blistering

heat ravaged our limbs and pasted upon our cracked lips its

fatigued emotional touch as our leader’s staff bent with sadness

upon seeing our desperation. We opened a new page, battle

of man against animal-man, women against goddesses,

virginity sacrificed in the first night of lust, we wrote short

pages and meaningful stigmata in our history, exclamation

points at the sight of the bird’s flight, full stop at the watering

hole where our bodies shed their salt and our cracked lips

regained their elasticity.

And this was our second month of pregnancy and this litany

was our second miracle.

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POEM BY KATERINA ANGHELAKI ROOKE

STAGING

I feel like the stage director of my agony

leading actor in the one-act play of stress

but who’s the playwright?

Who wrote this play

with such wrongly written acts

and who’s hiding behind the curtain

who won’t see Him when he comes down?

Yet the imaginary playwright

had imagined everything

even the moment

when the lights of the soul dim

and the stage empties

now resembling a blank page

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