Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Juggler
As if you don’t touch the ground, as if you are
on a ladder standing on another ladder,
and that one on another, innumerable ladders
which you can name ambition, pity, arrogance.
Name them fear of death, and that other fear,
the most horrible fear of life; name them: visions,
desires, memories, yours and of others who
gave you birth and who you never knew.
Name them: days and nights, call them God and
Void, and time, and justice, all the names.
Each word a dangerous big ladder, making up
a huge, trembling structure of ladders ready
to fall and held together only by your
little existence’s merciless balance.
https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/ke4yv6 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564
Manolis Aligizakis 