Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Now
pieces of the great incomparable dream we
once held
are taken away from us
warm parts of lost glories
wedged in our nails, go rotten, our hands swell,
hurt; they steal them from us while we sleep,
to the arms…
and we sang all together, hoped all together
and fell all together
the squares were full of gestures and visions
as we kneeled over our dead, you could say,
a piece of the earth was sinking, the coffins
floated in the air raised up by the sudden
wind of our songs;
to the arms…
And the defeated soldiers walked along
the indifferent roads, children put their tongues out
while the soldiers laughed for a moment
a vague distant laughter, as if they see for
the first time how beautiful life is.
Or sometimes, burdensome, they lift a stone
and throw it far away
in the space to the direction that perhaps Fate
passes. And they keep on walking in the spring
warmish light taking off their boots, their bags,
their clothes and staying naked,
full of lice, silence and lunacy of continuance
inside them.
The defeated soldiers, the defeated soldiers
have the sorrow of immenseness.
THE BRIDGE
Indeed, the halves of the hour are strange; especially for
those who are asleep
and have lost count of time; and more so for those who
are awake and count. The half hours maintain that
vague half that seeks its supplement and are conscious
of being half; and they’re conscious of the vague
other half, in the previous or the after, always in
the beyond and the outside;
strange, indeed are the half hours — they’re a suspended
perhaps loud 1 ½, 2 ½, 3 1/2 . Perhaps, and a perhaps
that sounds like a slash in the wholeness of time,
a sensitive, metallic pulse; a vibration like the thin blade
of a stiletto thrust in the middle of a bull’s forehead
like that sharp knife which whizzing through the dark
void is nailed in a closed door.
Routine
Often you said we needed
to change our habits
a new beginning to commence
a new purpose to seek
help to discover hope
and its elements
while all along
you remained resting
in lush recliner
and always you upheld
your beliefs while
tightly in hand
you held
the recliner’s lever
OBSTACLES
As you get to know me I raise another wall.
It’s not that I don’t want you to find out who I am
it’s not that I want to drive you off.
We only have to understand clearly
how many obstacles we can go over
so that we’ll meet again.
We have to find out how far our endurance can last;
Then, don’t forget that perhaps I don’t
put up the obstacles in front of us, but they exist
on me and inside of me like black scars
that change my shape and my color:
the obstacle of myself against myself.
Dancer
The dancer recoiled his body like a spring and inscribed
beautiful lines in the void as if teaching it the meaning
of love. The statue remained motionless, impossible
to recoil in its marble robe. Beggars knew every corner
of the big city, the bricks and mortar, lack of compassion
was already felt from the flight path of the pigeons while
children taught their teachers to skip rope and fairy-tales
they learned on TV: Aesop’s fables retold, reused, recycled,
words re-evaluated. Eyes of the children witnesses of myths
not yet narrated and the dancer recoiled his body like a spring
that inscribed the beautiful line: I love you. Once I was told
to love and finally it came to me that misery was all
I had inherited.
I like those who like their lives and they always give it
away as a gift.
A Familiar Dog
This dog we have known for years – always the same
always with a big bone in his teeth that he doesn’t even eat
his teeth don’t let it go (and how is he to bark?)
unless every night when we sleep while hiding
he gnaws it secretly and digging somewhere – who knows –
he finds a new bone for the next day or unless
he has learned that barking is useless
that he doesn’t protect anybody neither garden nor house
neither fountain nor himself from the moon from time
from the thieves
Manolis Aligizakis 