Long-listed for the 2023 Griffin poetry Awards
And so is this one who has aged and whose sin
and regret don’t keep her awake beyond herself
and who doesn’t care for gossip and such
These are today’s women, one of them says,
their husband is never enough and how can
he be enough when he’s old? The other said, and
compassion, standing erect, shines like a shield
in the sundown with Justice hanging onto it
like a thousand-year-old toothless mast, still
shivering in its anger. The third maid, the wisest,
kept her mouth shut and her eyes were blind and
floating in dreams.
Truly strange: people talk about everything foreign
and distant to them
while they experience all other burning things
which keep them awake during the night
in their silence
and when they die they take them to their grave;
for this reason the dead are silent since they live
their true life in the grave.
In fact the clerk was ready to read the daily police
reports in the tomorrow news. Indeed he was on time:
certainly five years in jail.
He didn’t know, perhaps because he always hated
the keys,
that each person keeps the key to their prison in
their pocket
and pretends to have forgotten it, and this is
their prison.
Manolis Aligizakis 