Long Listed for the Griffin Poetry Awards 2023
Usually
The next morning, in the side street, I was still holding
the umbrella tightly, as if I had hidden birds under it;
usually black birds that could escape the traps and
often I discovered a secret, new misfortune in my hat,
like the blind we take by the hand though he hears
the garden
or as if I had seen Jesus in the public baths walking
on water or the needy in the hospital being put together
on a line like small cenotaphs made of loosened gauzes
or as if perhaps I could fall in battle, defending my cuffs
from all historical disfiguring or as if I would sing without
a mouth like the most insignificant axe when it remembers
or like those usually reported missing by the newspapers
while they saunter in the wild verses of poets who have
died early in life.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 