Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
(Excerpt)
Ah, when shall we return? Bring one of those
old carriages
which parked in the suburb square or the ones
created by the evening shadows. And I, why
did I grow? What was I expecting to find? Distant
voices heard in a dream
or a lonely night when you, in lust, cried silently
for things forgotten by most people
and we shall never find that era when we lived
the best we had love for a colourful pebble, the
secret burial of a bird,
or a letter, without an addressee, which we took
to the post-office
since our summer friend had left without letting us
know
“but the letter has no addressee” the post-office clerk
said – since then you knew the world can’t offer you
any help.
Besides time has come to accept that we too don’t create
anything important; yet what is important? And of what
use would it be?
My good people fate tricked us or the dream
betrayed us and oh, futile hope, how we loved you
once!
The twenty-day moon. How have the years passed?
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Unclear Encounters
Those who met by chance on the road were strangers they didn’t speak
they didn’t beckon with their hands or a glance Although
they looked as if they agreed with the moonlight entering through
the blinds in a closed villa as though in agreement with the whimper
of a shirt falling on the floor – Perhaps Hellenes. They had
a scar on their foreheads – an intimate mark – some time ago red
had turned whitish lighting their faces They didn’t speak
Only during the nights of September, they look absentmindedly
at the gardens of old houses, the gas stations the kiosks
a light blue lamp under the trees the clock of the
Customs Building and bit by bit their arms became longer
and they turned into fishes those who learned the deep
underwater voices and now stay silent
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Picture by Germain Droogenbroodt, girl in Cambodian refugee camp
GIVE ME A BRIGAND’S VOICE, LORD
Give me a brigand’s voice, Lord,
and a lion’s pen
on this earth
that sheds blood and
shows unspeaking children
with terror in their eyes.
Justice is
air
water
bread
grass that plays up to your knees
and a lilting voice…
flowering skylarks in their nests
that war shakes up
and devastates.
Maria Nivea Zagarella (Sicilia)
ΔΩΣΕ ΜΟΥ, ΚΥΡΙΕ
Δώσε μου, Κύριε, του κλέφτη τη φωνή,
του λιονταριού την πένα
στη γη τούτη που χύνει
το αίμα αμίλητων παιδιών
με τρόμο στα μάτια τους
ζωγραφισμένο.
Δικαιοσύνη είναι ο αγέρας
το νερό,
το ψωμί,
και το γρασίδι που παίζει ως τα γόνατα σου
και μια φωνή που ανυψώνει
κορυδαλούς μες στις φωλιές τους
που ο πόλεμος συντρίβει και καταστρέφει.
Μετάφραση Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη//translated by Manolis Aligizakis
Translated into English by Gaetano Cipolla
From: Ncuntraiu lu mari, 2019
New Pretexts
He recalled the young newspaper sellers, winter,
in the underground Station.
Sparrows of the schoolyards in front of the foggy
windows.
Those small children’s beds in the hospital — how
guiltless.
Just before Christmas, it was raining; they were singing
Christmas carols, down in the city.
“What do I have?” he asked. No one answered. The question
looked elsewhere. Same with poetry, elsewhere, with
the kitchen apron
warming up our yesterday meal. “Yes, and poetry, he said,
or rather a few words and long in-between pauses”.
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Manolis Aligizakis 