LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS
If I reached so far it’s because I didn’t want to
realize that they didn’t answer me
and ah, I wasted time in the roads following this or that
inheritor and an unspecified hour
when everything will be explained without words or
when we won’t exist;
when I finally returned the city was plundered, wagons
were pushed aside,
the uprising was part of the past and all who were standing
kept on shooting
for a small trophy at the countryside shooting range
and, at night, “what time is it”? You ask, “eight” they
answer; we survive with such wretched uncertainties and
no one saw the crime since the perfect murder took place
where nothing could occur anymore. However I was impatient
like one who opens his umbrella in dry weather (perhaps
because he doesn’t want to forget)
or someone who dresses as a woman so he can still say
a childish lie
then, don’t be unjust to me if I closed my eyes: it was to
defend the world
or I remembered mother’s hands as she put the broom
behind the loosened door perhaps securing something
distant
while the cemetery, on the other side of the road, rustled
softly like the epilogue of a mystery.
https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/ke4yv6?page=1&pageSize=10
Manolis Aligizakis 