Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

2023 Longlist Announcement

Exaggerations

     Then the chandelier crushed down with a bang, the floor

cracked and the primeval crime was revealed, great words,

you’d say, but what else we’re left with?

     Like all heroes I met the piano tuner at the stairway or

the clock maker “no one is upstairs”, I said and then a bit

              quieter  “give me another chance”

     I recognized my killer in all the faces or I felt the danger

in front of one word; yet I survived like the blind they sent

away but with a song that gave me its hand on the road

      or if I stood magnanimously it was because I was

in a hurry and one wastes less when one forgives like

those led in the kitchen to eat and after they finish they

wipe their plate clean, as if erasing their last marks and

there were a myriad of stars up on the sky so I didn’t

              know where to go.  

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Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume I

The Road

Even glory is a road – he says –

it is the breaking of the road and also the bridge

there where you lay the basket with the bread

the knife and napkin on the ledge

in an obvious spot and you hide

behind the wall late at dusk

waiting for the first passerby to eat his dinner

to look at his teeth to see his appetite to hear

the sound of crumbs falling off the cliff

as he wipes his lips (or your lips?)

with the reverse side of his palm with

no effort to unfold the white napkin

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Wheat Ears-Selected Poems

Bus Driver

He looked safe behind glass partitions

walls people build to keep fear away

almost as if in the placenta, uterus protecting

flexibility, giggling emotion

before the first cry of disappointment

reborn anxiety, vague exegesis

of coming into the painful world

with fluidity in his movement he

gave me my transfer absentmindedly

carefully perusing the world

passing in front of him, giving

and collecting in rhythm with

society’s rules perfectly tuned

to the holy mastermind

while a second world behind the driver

two juveniles debating

who of them would punch

the old man sitting in front of them

just to add indisputable importance

to their unimportant existence when

the driver gazed at them in the mirror

and his mind run to the third world

focused on his wife who left him a month ago

driver floated in three-dimensional world

and he looked safe behind glass partitions

almost as if in his mother’s womb

just before his first cry was heard

just before he committed his first sin

just before he came into being

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Titos Patrikios – Selected Poems

V

I couldn’t become again

a silent drop of copper.

I couldn’t forget the many

faces who forgot themselves.

I can’t keep on breathing in an air which

can’t be expanded by thousands and

thousands of lives.

And this rock is my place

and these wild fig trees are

my motherland

yet only one color over my eyes

only one spring vein under my soil

only one unique age of time inside me

aren’t enough.

I want the whole of my earth

I want the tired man to lift so much death, so much sun,

I want thousands of houses with fire in their fireplaces

or with the tumbled down fireplace,

I want the pickaxe, and the shovel, and the nets

the wounded forehead of sweat

oh, my tortured hope,

oh my land, my homeland

hold me tight in your arms

and let me cry, cry, cry

for all your killed ravines,

for all your orphan islands,

for all your hungry fields,

let my cry deeper than your roots

more sad than your mourning,

more certain than your light —

until I shall be reborn with you.

I want the noise of machines,

the warm smell of the body,

I want our voice.

Speak. Speak.

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Μαγνησία: Το Διμήνι και το Σέσκλο

ΕΛΛΑΣ

Αναπαράσταση του νεολιθικού οικισμού στο Διμήνι Μαγνησίας (πηγή: Υπουργείο Πολιτισμού και Αθλητισμού, ΙΓ’ Εφορεία Προϊστορικών και Κλασικών Αρχαιοτήτων)

Γράφει ο Βαγγέλης Στεργιόπουλος

Δύο από τους σημαντικότερους προϊστορικούς οικισμούς όχι μόνο της Μαγνησίας και της Θεσσαλίας, αλλά και ολόκληρης της Ελλάδας έχουν ανασκαφεί δυτικά του πολεοδομικού συγκροτήματος του Βόλου, στο Διμήνι και στο Σέσκλο.

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