Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/

Era of Multiplicity

Sometimes I think of all the people I’ve met:

my childhood comrades, the stones we collected

when it rained and put them under awnings so they

         wouldn’t catch a cold;

some friends died, some sank in life, others stepped

          on me to walk over,

the dead comrades in battle, on the snow or in the

makeshift bunkers,

those who didn’t return, the deserters, the others who

compromised. I think of my comrades in prison,

          the cigarettes we shared,

the loneliness that each of us kept for all our lives

the long glances out of the windows and the tearless

goodbyes of the moribund. People with great souls

or worthless, defenseless or powerful each of them

trusting the other with something one gave to one

or denied. Many words, so many gestures, so many

persons inside of me

that I’m not myself anymore.

And you, my beloved, when you deny me, you leave

a whole saddened world outside your door.

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