Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/
Alcoholism
I, holding a lamp, was going down the stairs; I had
to discover who I was, what I accomplished in the past;
yet, the house was still standing, although we had once
pushed the walls down to make room for the one who
was leaving;
crippled men played my fortune in a card game,
at the far end, Jesus of the drunks was passing each
night along the foggy streetlamps, and I followed
the killer wiping his footprints in the snow, since
by now I knew; the woman, when I tried to hug her
made a light gesture and went into her door
leaving me outside.
Oh Lord, please allow me to be dead and drunk.
Only leave the stars which were friendly to me
even in the streets where they were shooting.
Hyperbole
And I evoked the Great Spirit
when I saw the woman dressed
in the softness of her skin and
when I felt her children’s soles dancing around
my trunk I was a delicate
fairy in the arms of the wind
before the axe of white man took
my life to warm up his loneliness
man who sighed the sadness of absence
and I said
I was never a bearer of negation
only partner of the child’s laughter
innocent curiosity of the open window
I stood amid the giants when
my gigantic wings couldn’t fit
in my room’s enclosure I spread
upon the harmonious melody of the waves
the forest owl crying on my limb
2nd of November
Today Mitsos received a letter from Skopelos.
Antigone writes “the island autumn
is full of small yellow lilies;
poor Mitsos, you don’t remember those
small lilies;
you never liked the botany class”
Mitsos wiped his glasses and read the letter again.
The discarded Introduction to Botany.
is laid next to him, on the rocks.
He smiled, took off his glasses, didn’t wipe them.
I want to write a poem about Mitsos
not with words
but with small yellow lilies.
Twilight
Rough darkened terrain, footings
of wisdom reflecting bygone
years in immensity
what would you like to smile about?
from myriad pleasant images
migrating like caribou
from north to south and a lone
Inuskshuk standing with a
faint smile balking under difficult
years contending with wholeness
of undressed vistas and endless
hues cascading or whirling upward
with seed husks and precipitate
until nothing remains but
pneuma and a treasured logos
woven through eternity’s shawl
Manolis Aligizakis 