There are no women or any children

only old grey-haired, middle-aged men

and lads and they slowly come

stooping and tired as if getting out

of hiding places inside the earth or

from some sunless dungeons.

They stop awhile and tremble

unfamiliar as they are

in the road and under such sun

with their hands over their eyes

and their hands on their foreheads

as if blinded by gleam and fear

and they walk away frightened

by the sunlight and the far-gleaming

sea, by the horizon’s edge and

the sky over and around them

as if in a daylight game.

They seem as if they are born to

stoop over hard-to-read

books and old synaxarions

and over something more precious

than the Arabic topaz and

pearls from Hormuz

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3LP7NW6

Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards

2023 Longlist Announcement

Ambush

      The sun went down behind the army barracks,

beggars searched for some water however all the water

pitchers in Cana were inverted; women cried as they left

in the yellow dusk, I, haunted, shared my wine with

the robbers and pseudo-martyrs on the hill while

the cross was already biting the edge of my coat.

       Who could I love? To whom should I confess? Only

God can say He heard me complaining, I drank all

the bog they threw at me, my dreams became

the paths onto which triumphant carts rode; I plucked

my wings and gave them to the old, all-alone

woman who was buried with the sparrow under

the neighbour’s tree, in an old pencil case full of ash;

remember me, when the time comes.

      Prisoners’ handiworks were drying by the fireplace.

It was autumn, the fields were deserted, and I heard the steps

of informers who stole the hay. Then I noticed the great

gallows where I was to climb, unknown whether I was

to be crowned king or to roll down to the basket

of the beheaded.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Λευτέρης Πούλιος, Τα περιπλανώμενα φιλιά μας

Excerpt

The beach where Francisco lived was rough and wild. About 300 metres
from shore was a large reef comprised of great slabs of barnacled
stone and rock, tossed there eons earlier by a great upheaval of the earth’s
crust. It was a magical world, where all you had to do if you were hungry
was go out to the reef and catch a fish or dig for clams. They were all there
for the taking, and Francisco taught Ken how to dig and how to fish.
Ken thought the beach was perfect – not so Francisco. He complained,
“If only we had a nice beach. It would be so fine if we had some sand so
that people would come and sit on the beach.”
“Why do you want people to come here?” Ken asked.
“People like to come to a beach,” Francisco said. “They bring their
parasols and picnics – why shouldn’t they come here?”
Ken wasn’t sure that he wanted to share either his beach or Francisco
with anyone else but the old fisherman approached Ken’s father, who
made a presentation to city council; telling them, they should build a wall
from the beach to the sea at a particular angle to the reef. Then, when the
storms came, driving waves laden with sand, the wall would trap the sand
and deposit it on the beach.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573

Avenue

I walk alone in the dark avenue

holding a black cat in my arms

(Perhaps my soul or my fear

perhaps my boredom or my craziness

perhaps this poem

that jumped off the shrubs to my chest

like a wildcat).

Alone and gigantic on the dark avenue

like a hollow bell over the sea of my mind

metaphysical flower of my internal garden

that is leafed in the darkness aimlessly.

I hear the screeching of wheels behind me

afraid to look

perhaps God is on his bicycle having his evening stroll

perhaps the tank of time that flattens me

I feel the words melting in the intense fire

my past days melt inside of me

and I

        who loved the deepest beauty of life

saunter alone in the dark road of my hours

smoking the subterranean sorrow of this world

that kills itself because of boredom or craziness

with a big jump in the gorge of this earth —

burning its name in a reverie

incising the veins of its hope

that water with their most precious blood

the leaves of the tree

Desperation.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763653

12 μαρτίου 1977 – 12 marzo 1977

EXILE DIARIES

29^th of October

We found the skull of a donkey’s head

among the thorns and the red fallen leaves

perhaps it’s the head of summer

left on the wet stones

with small light-blue flowers around it

the names of which we don’t know.

If one yells behind the fence

his voice settles speedily on the ground

like the starch paper cone filled with black raisins.

During the night we hear noise coming from the hill

where they change the deflated wheel of the moon.

Later things find their places again

as you by chance find the front courtyard

or the brown button of your coat, and you know:

it’s not the button of a theater actor’s uniform, not at all,

it’s just a regular button you need to sew on your coat

with that tender, clumsy care

of a perpetual apprentice.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK

Bowing Out
At every step, someone falls asleep,
but like a gunfire
I hear my heart beating
and I can’t even cover it up,
nor wake it.
Can’t be all
martyrs happy,
only those who already have
had something read from me.
Yes, I am a heretic
and I am right
in a religious controversy bleeding
my fist and my eyelids
but I’m wearing a mask,
the same like
the face that’s underneath.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763645

Η έξυπνη στρατηγική του Πούτιν – Τι προσπαθεί να κάνει από το Κουρσκ

Μάρκος Μέσκος, Το άγριο περιστέρι