There are no women or any children
only old grey-haired, middle-aged men
and lads and they slowly come
stooping and tired as if getting out
of hiding places inside the earth or
from some sunless dungeons.
They stop awhile and tremble
unfamiliar as they are
in the road and under such sun
with their hands over their eyes
and their hands on their foreheads
as if blinded by gleam and fear
and they walk away frightened
by the sunlight and the far-gleaming
sea, by the horizon’s edge and
the sky over and around them
as if in a daylight game.
They seem as if they are born to
stoop over hard-to-read
books and old synaxarions
and over something more precious
than the Arabic topaz and
pearls from Hormuz
Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Ambush
The sun went down behind the army barracks,
beggars searched for some water however all the water
pitchers in Cana were inverted; women cried as they left
in the yellow dusk, I, haunted, shared my wine with
the robbers and pseudo-martyrs on the hill while
the cross was already biting the edge of my coat.
Who could I love? To whom should I confess? Only
God can say He heard me complaining, I drank all
the bog they threw at me, my dreams became
the paths onto which triumphant carts rode; I plucked
my wings and gave them to the old, all-alone
woman who was buried with the sparrow under
the neighbour’s tree, in an old pencil case full of ash;
remember me, when the time comes.
Prisoners’ handiworks were drying by the fireplace.
It was autumn, the fields were deserted, and I heard the steps
of informers who stole the hay. Then I noticed the great
gallows where I was to climb, unknown whether I was
to be crowned king or to roll down to the basket
of the beheaded.
Excerpt
The beach where Francisco lived was rough and wild. About 300 metres
from shore was a large reef comprised of great slabs of barnacled
stone and rock, tossed there eons earlier by a great upheaval of the earth’s
crust. It was a magical world, where all you had to do if you were hungry
was go out to the reef and catch a fish or dig for clams. They were all there
for the taking, and Francisco taught Ken how to dig and how to fish.
Ken thought the beach was perfect – not so Francisco. He complained,
“If only we had a nice beach. It would be so fine if we had some sand so
that people would come and sit on the beach.”
“Why do you want people to come here?” Ken asked.
“People like to come to a beach,” Francisco said. “They bring their
parasols and picnics – why shouldn’t they come here?”
Ken wasn’t sure that he wanted to share either his beach or Francisco
with anyone else but the old fisherman approached Ken’s father, who
made a presentation to city council; telling them, they should build a wall
from the beach to the sea at a particular angle to the reef. Then, when the
storms came, driving waves laden with sand, the wall would trap the sand
and deposit it on the beach.
Avenue
I walk alone in the dark avenue
holding a black cat in my arms
(Perhaps my soul or my fear
perhaps my boredom or my craziness
perhaps this poem
that jumped off the shrubs to my chest
like a wildcat).
Alone and gigantic on the dark avenue
like a hollow bell over the sea of my mind
metaphysical flower of my internal garden
that is leafed in the darkness aimlessly.
I hear the screeching of wheels behind me
afraid to look
perhaps God is on his bicycle having his evening stroll
perhaps the tank of time that flattens me
I feel the words melting in the intense fire
my past days melt inside of me
and I
who loved the deepest beauty of life
saunter alone in the dark road of my hours
smoking the subterranean sorrow of this world
that kills itself because of boredom or craziness
with a big jump in the gorge of this earth —
burning its name in a reverie
incising the veins of its hope
that water with their most precious blood
the leaves of the tree
Desperation.
EXILE DIARIES
29th of October
We found the skull of a donkey’s head
among the thorns and the red fallen leaves
perhaps it’s the head of summer
left on the wet stones
with small light-blue flowers around it
the names of which we don’t know.
If one yells behind the fence
his voice settles speedily on the ground
like the starch paper cone filled with black raisins.
During the night we hear noise coming from the hill
where they change the deflated wheel of the moon.
Later things find their places again
as you by chance find the front courtyard
or the brown button of your coat, and you know:
it’s not the button of a theater actor’s uniform, not at all,
it’s just a regular button you need to sew on your coat
with that tender, clumsy care
of a perpetual apprentice.
Bowing Out
At every step, someone falls asleep,
but like a gunfire
I hear my heart beating
and I can’t even cover it up,
nor wake it.
Can’t be all
martyrs happy,
only those who already have
had something read from me.
Yes, I am a heretic
and I am right
in a religious controversy bleeding
my fist and my eyelids
but I’m wearing a mask,
the same like
the face that’s underneath.
Manolis Aligizakis 