Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Autumnal Exercise
Autumn is harsh to innocence and our adventure will
finally remain unexplained;
but when the moon rises we’re all guilty and a child
in the suburb collects the leaves as if they’re proof
of a killing or the fool smiles while he’s done with harvesting
and at night the dreamer is king; for this he has nothing
to do but to write on a window pane all day long, reading
passages of another era, since he knows that he might be
forgotten like a mother’s breast that now nurses the narrow
path
and, oh, strange windstorm, when they all have the same
thought of sheltering themselves and the crippled jumps
hastily between his crutches like a bird.
Manolis Aligizakis 