Tasos Livaditis – Poems, Volume II

LONG LISTED FOR THE 2023 GRIFFIN POETRY AWARDS

Heroism Without a Hero

     Therefore let us say goodbye, who knows? Generations will

come to find me in the same position especially at night when

I’m absent

     when everything is vague like a woman who aged from

dress to dress or a grey street sign onto which the unsuspecting

children lean,

     of course, I’ve also been a naïve idealist with no ticket or

I’ve heard the creaking of a door and its real meaning like a

the rain song that takes the side of the poor

     and every so often I lowered the light of the lamp so that I

could gain another adventure like someone they sent away many

a time until he becomes fully bloomed or I fell asleep in front of

the wheels of a car or that I wouldn’t sing only at night when fame

was asleep;

     I am completely dishonest like this world that it belongs to you

only when you promise it to someone.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763564

Yannis Ritsos – Poems, Volume III

Fishing

They were mending nets, baskets, lamps all afternoon;

the weather looked very good for fishing: low clouds

the gray-blue of the sky had faded away. When night came

we could see from the village shivering lights in the sea

as if it was us fishing in the opposite direction; soon

we got tired from that vague certainty. We went to bed.

We never found out whether they caught any fishes.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TLBNFK

George Seferis – Collected Poems

ON STAGE

5

Who heard at high noon

the knife’s hiss on the sharpening stone?

Who was the rider who came

with the kindling and the torch?

Everyone washes his hands

and freshens them up.

And who disembowelled the woman the baby and the house?

There is no one guilty smoke.

Who run away

with horseshoes striking the flagstones?

They did away with their eyes; they’re blind.

There are no witnesses anymore, to anything

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J