Long Listed for the Griffin Poetry Awards 2023
Devil With a Candlestick
6
And here we are after many adventures we meet
in the same place again;
“Rachel, Rachel” I yelled; harvest was over; we
formed a black line
in front of cash desk where two faceless hands paid
for our wasted day
in fact one who hid the promise in his hat was stoned
behind the warehouses
“Rachel” I remember an old station in the middle of
the plain with a small lamppost
where I met Peter, in rags and uncle Moses, old type
setter
“uncle” I said to him “you owe me a finger” because
I had touched him the night when they covered him
like a corpse
“nephew” he said “right now we need a good restaurant
for a good resurrection, all else is bullshit”
therefore the three of us decided to become partners
so we could find the hill easier
and, of course, historians were unjust to us since none
of them ever arrived on time
and the dinner they had promised us was long ago over.
In fact someone who saw them through the window,
gulping his saliva,
was the only survivor so he could narrate, uninvited as
he was, the inglorious end.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 