Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Now
pieces of the great incomparable dream we
once held
are taken away from us
warm parts of lost glories
wedged in our nails, go rotten, our hands swell,
hurt; they steal them from us while we sleep,
to the arms…
and we sang all together, hoped all together
and fell all together
the squares were full of gestures and visions
as we kneeled over our dead, you could say,
a piece of the earth was sinking, the coffins
floated in the air raised up by the sudden
wind of our songs;
to the arms…
And the defeated soldiers walked along
the indifferent roads, children put their tongues out
while the soldiers laughed for a moment
a vague distant laughter, as if they see for
the first time how beautiful life is.
Or sometimes, burdensome, they lift a stone
and throw it far away
in the space to the direction that perhaps Fate
passes. And they keep on walking in the spring
warmish light taking off their boots, their bags,
their clothes and staying naked,
full of lice, silence and lunacy of continuance
inside them.
The defeated soldiers, the defeated soldiers
have the sorrow of immenseness.
Manolis Aligizakis 