Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
loneliness is immense so that people come in two
at a time to endure it. Oftentimes they come
three or four at a time of those extra lonely that human
comfort calls perverted as if sin and self-humiliation
as well as the people’s contempt cover another great
shuttering inside them. Thousands of people come
daily to meet in these third-class hotels with their
mythical, sunken names Atlantis, Mycenae, Europe,
New Life and
to say that they love each other and want to enter
one inside the other
since they are cold, they feel cold because of their
lost dreams
their lost years, memories that don’t want to die
thus maintaining the great populace away from
its loneliness.
And the three middle-aged maids
those who make the erotic beds
who have never been loved
those with
the big teary horse eyes
forgotten in the snow
gathered in the maids’ room
like an ancient tragic chorus
in front of the propylaea
of a dirty sink
talk with such forbearance
that even the simplest words
from their bitter mouths
suddenly take the deep gleam
of the myths.
And they talk of their earnings
about the rain, dreams, regrets…
Manolis Aligizakis 