Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

And suddenly the last firings of the surrendered

            city

as the wind brought footsteps and rifle shootings

              and out of tune songs

many soldiers were wearing civilian cloths and

              ran over the walls

houses resembled dead faces in the moonlight frost

unburied corpses on the roads, left to the dogs

              and God

and the shooters, stood by the corners hugging

their rifles like the body of a woman who

               had betrayed them.

Then, again the same road, among the dead horses

               and the broken rifles

women were sitting by the entrance of each burnt up

               village and cried

moistening a little flour in their palm to feed

               the babies.

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LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

A clay pitcher is moulded, remolded like flowing light,

experimenting with itself, still hasn’t decided to exist

and you hear the semicircle dance of its handle that curls

more and more, then less and less, touching the body of

the pitcher momentarily, again to distance itself quite

independently, looking elsewhere, meaning something

else, floating in the intoxication of its lissomness, like

a winged serpent, like an autonomous flower made of

              rosy silver.

And they all wait, in their beautiful palindrome,

for you to undertake their responsibility, to create them,

to give them meaning, shape, and to name them and

place them in their positions. Yet, absorbed as you’re

in the vague and useless, you delay; then, at the time of

the last forgetfulness, the time you have to light the lamp,

the horrible ringing echoes in your sleep like a punctual

alarm clock that stops sleep, like an erotic spasm that

stops lust. You stand up and the rays of the lamp you’re

about to light have already wrapped around your neck,

like ropes your hands lifting you up, and outside.

And, in the light you put on to guide the ships,

you see the ships which look at your lamp

you see your golden, miraculous and useful  hands.

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