Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
And time, always, turns
two people who love each other passionately
into two strangers indifferent to each other
who go to sleep alone, in different beds
and people meet and separate
without taking anything from one another,
because love is the most difficult way to get
to know someone.
You remember, don’t you? We felt so warm
among the crowd as we walked filling the streets.
Our hands touched, our voices hugged in the songs
a strong light dripped off our flags that were
up front
and off our dead who we had left behind.
Then finally the charge was successful, we got
in the city shouting and blowing the bridges;
we had meetings, chose revolutionary committees
and we existed among the flashes of fires,
the firings and the wind that was bringing
the first autumnal leaves.
Because people, comrade, live from the moment
they find their place
in the life of others.
Manolis Aligizakis 