Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/
Encounters
I met Christopher Columbus one night while I
walked, drunk, on the roads of old Europe.
Christopher, I asked him, why you are so sad?
However, without answering, he walked into a bar
and then he went away to the Ocean.
Then, during the dirty nights of 1950, while
I was having my cognac, he came in as an old,
miserable comrade dressed in rags.
Why are you so sad Christopher? I asked again.
He didn’t answer, he drank his glass in one gulp
and vanished into the darkness.
The same scene, years later, with other persons,
in a different bar. Only the name was the same
and the same desperation.
And the same far-away Ocean.
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Manolis Aligizakis 