Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
If, one day, I manage to escape, I’ll open a small
store in a side street
to sell bitter things: tiny taxidermy animals, biographies
of poor people,
eyelids that never closed and of course, unthoughtful
spirit lamps;
on the entrance I’ll write, “pay the blind man on the
opposite side, he’s the only one who knows”. During
the evening I’ll sit by the door with my black hat and
a patisserie tray on hand for whoever can understand.
And perhaps that funny old woman may return with her
faint smile held with pins
“I’ve brought it to you” she will say, “she has her
own house” and perhaps she means uncertainty or
the dead woman or as the Lord may have ordered
since the preacher kept on crying out “brothers”
and untie Eudokia “silence” she says to me “what’s
this and put the wall back to where it belongs”.
Now I’m sad that you won’t be able to write to me,
my good friend,
the envelopes and writing paper are expensive indeed
for a dead person (who they unthoughtfully bury
in the dampness)
yet when I usually think of you
it’s as if I get dressed in all the black ashtrays and
your mother, let them call her crazy because she always
holds an umbrella,
since it always rains in the world now, as an old poet
would have said, the real stories are very rare.
God help us.
Manolis Aligizakis 