Neo-Hellene Poets, an Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry 1750-2018

POEM BY KATERINA GOGOU

NOSTOS

I

My kingdom lies

beyond the terminal of the winds

visible from the other side

of the blue mountain peak.

It keeps me away from relatives

a badly shaped marble cross

with an erroneous date of death

of the one they named my father.

The path is very long

and I come from afar covered by dust

keeping the rules of my race

I killed my horse

with the sword dipped in sunlight.

They dragged me here

I’m still here

in the kingdom of the worst humiliation

in the nation of need.

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Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

2023 Longlist Announcement

End of Day Desires

     Often, having no hope for anything anymore, I’d open

my old calendar: humble saints crowded the yellow pages;

I’d call them with a whisper and of course the dead finally

win; when the hotel man, St. Sampson, had just arrived,

“how have you reached heavens?” I asked, “the stairway

was dark”, he said,

     certainly all this seems imaginary but I who had stayed

with them for years, at times I sat on the edge of the bed

and I followed the man who passed by, “where are you

headed, can you not see?”  I asked him; no one answered,

“then”, I said to him, “don’t be late though when you send

the killer at least let him be a child”.

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