The long wait for the angel

After four years I have decided to read my fourth book in Italian in thirty years. It's a powerful "incandescent" novel on the life of the Venetian Reneaissance painter Jacomo Tintoretto. The details, the atmosphere are vibrant, the colour red dominates with that sense of peculiar closeness the stones and walls of my city can create. The stones' stare. And the water lapping your breath.
"The long wait for the angel" is the English translation of the title of this novel. A novel my wife praised to me probably more than any other. What is interesting is that "The long wait for the angel" is not really the translation of the title since it is the translation in Italian of a line from a 1956 Sylvia Plath's poem which I have just found. I felt it so close to me when I read it that I received that jolt any reader of poetry I think knows well when each line he or she has just taken in is on target. This is probably the best poem I have ever read on miracles and on the wait for them.

Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain. I do not expect a miracle Or an accident To set the sight on fire In my eye, not seek Any more in the desultory weather some design, But let spotted leaves fall as they fall, Without ceremony, or portent. Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Leap incandescent Out of the kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --- Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent By bestowing largesse, honor, One might say love. At any rate, I now walk Wary (for it could happen Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical, Yet politic; ignorant Of whatever angel may choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize my senses, haul My eyelids up, and grant A brief respite from fear Of total neutrality. With luck, Trekking stubborn through this season Of fatigue, I shall Patch together a content Of sorts. Miracles occur, If you care to call those spasmodic Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again, The long wait for the angel. For that rare, random descent.

Fondamenta Delle Carceri.

 

Steps in the night silence,

walking and talking, I’ve always liked

a moment in the tale of one’s life

that sparks into an epiphany.

 

I was walking you to the car park-

the evening of confessions was almost over,

your words with layers as deep as the city

not fearing the mud they sank in, not at all-

we were passing by the prison, on the stones

skirting the grass, damp with frost, it was cold,

the puffs of our breaths pulsing the graphics of our words.

I said, “You look better than last time, definitely”,

your eyes were dark pools, jewels shining

with the lights of the street lamps in the fog,

I’ve always liked the blur of light filtered into

the damp and thick dots of air,

what brings so close any breath, any stare.

“I look better, maybe, well.. I’ve lost that

whimpering edge in my voice because

now, you know, I’m in the shit, really”.

You smiled then, for the first time.

I said” Shit does you good.”

And I embraced you for a second by the prison door.

 

I left you at the car park, your eyes,

in the light of the asphalt and the lightened glass,

were still retaining the shards of a smile.

Walking back, in the dark corners,

frost and salt gnawing plasters,

your “in the shit” was sparkling,

a necklace of furrows, a silver lace of troubles

where I would anyway have liked to be.

 

Dark and damp corners. Life.

While I was in bed a lace

kept sparkling in a chink in the shutters.

That night I couldn’t sleep.

THE STRETCH

 

Hardened sand with embedded shells

at the water’s edge, low winter sun,

clear sky, sea horizon.

 

Zero’s beauty. Its vast “r”.

The merging of here with there

in the quiet waves’ roar.

HOW MANY TIMES?

 

Being not completely out,

not yet, the brief candle,

how many times

you have let yourself go

exploiting the momentum,

the silence of those

hearing you,

maybe listening,

how many times you have

kept speaking pretending

not to notice the surrounding

indifference

 

and have repeated

the same sentence

which hides another, the real one,

or hides simply emptiness

or a vacancy or the vertigo

of the unspeakable

for which you would need

another courage,

another forage,

 

how many times

you have not been able

to step into a full stop,

driven by your own windmill,

swirling in the chill,

pretending a thrill

entwined in your own reel.

 

And the sea is still

and still spreading, still and spreading,

how relentlessly and uselessly

you have been faring while fearing

the silence that is?

THE BOOK OF ORDERS

 

 

It’s blue, it’s there like a stone,

as inert and dead as a bone

on the table in the teachers’ room.

Teachers must check and double-check,

with the same care riders have for their

horse’s girth, what is written in it,

this is the headmaster’s law, take it or leave it

( leave it if you can, leave it all –said to me a friend,

but that was ages and ages ago when” I

was young and foolish”).

So I enter the room, leaf through the book’s pages

still with my coat on and get to the call

of my latest duties beyond the regular teaching,

assemblies, reunions, what the headmaster wants,

whether I like it or not. I never like it.

The word “ unfair” keeps hanging stubbornly

like a sting, in my heart and in the air.

It has been hanging for many a decade,

will it keep hanging until I fade?

 

At the end of the year the book is thick

with the pages of orders pasted in it.

Bones never grow in the earth, they

get yellower and smoother, solemn

in their motionlessness.

This book gets bloated like the corpse

of a drowned man.

Burn, burn the corpse if you can.

A GOD

 

Just closing the door,

quick, leaving home before dawn,

you smell the street-

damp stones, a tang of metal, the cold,

and the forwardness of the steps and puffs of breath,

the velvet darkness on the move, the starkness

of the early things down on the pavement,

sparse coughs lighting it like sparks;

instants of a god in a rush, on the threshold,

whispering with no words but elation,

a nimble sky that touches and goes,

the sprightly wave of a sidelong glance

between hurry and silence.

 

I was thinking about this poem this morning, feeling again the same wintry, elated atmosphere while leaving home to go to work. It's about streets in Venice even if, for a reader, could be set in any place. I am writing a long poem now on Venetian places and on how they are at one with my whole being...

 

"A God" is almost ten years old, it appeared in "Dream Catcher" in the spring 2003.

DOG AND DRIFTWOOD

 

 

Debris, all over the strand,

driftwood after a sea storm,

poured out of the horizon’s frown,

our tossed up losses, our mess from the unknown.

 

She enjoys jumping in and out of this wood web,

sniffing salt on rugged damp bark

while the sea roar fills the picture

with its wide open throat.

 

It could be anything seen from above,

the tatters of us all, the gristle of our souls,

many a Lear’s new rages and regrets,

released from dragonish clouds to make us strut and fret.

 

I gaze, blow a thin whistle in her direction,

asking to move forward, lose sight of her

for a moment in this Guernica of wood,

then she reappears, a long stick in her mouth on top

 

of a mountain of sand, she is dangling it from side to side

as if it were a trophy I am due to recognize.

All this, like anything, could be a dream,

its sense scattered and lost in what is seen.

 

Another flash in the puzzle,

in the scattering of our transit,

what we can remember and forget, put in a life’s file,

what we can't but accept, in the meanwhile.

On the dictatorship of things on-line

Passwords’ world.

You flick a click.

Confirm or cancel.

Heaven or Hell.

 

Now they ask me for a new password

to get access to information about my salary,

but they don’t tell me where to get the new password

but showing a tremendous intelligence they underline

that the new password can’t be the old password.

To get to know where to get the new password

I need to fill an on-line form with several obligatory fields,

if I am not wrong one these fields require a password.

But maybe I am wrong, stormed by a password’s throng.

 

The world within a password, hardly passing a real word.

 

Words on-line

declining our decline.

WRITING THE TESTAMENT

Impeccable language the layer’s

sitting in front, helping me

with all that’s necessary

to be simple, precise, unequivocal.

Other words almost amusingly

flash in my mind while I write:

“The legal clarity of the sky”.

Sunlight is filtering

through the white curtains

and spreading on the spacious

thick oak table

and in the lawyer’s gaze,

a gorgeous woman by the way,

who is concentrated on my paper,

dictating me, translating actually

my wishes into legality.

Translating, transmuting I dare say

words into the unknown,

into the not yet,

it’s funny how we are cordially

smiling and laughing in this office,

with our looks projected

beyond the body.

And it’s funny that I feel,

while cruising through the impalpable,

that something is being accomplished,

sailing to a great full stop.

 

I have always loved my own writing,

its legibility, its sliding on the paper

effortlessly, its weightlessness

out of the body’s weight.

 

I have almost finished now:

I am writing “In faith”

and my signature.

A clear feather cast

into swarming sunlight.

LISTENING TO "TEMPEST"

Let me go unbridled with words like “apotheosis”,

let me not revise, check, hone, let me sweep all minutiae away

because you well know how we are going to end,

enjoy with me this waltz while the whole world

is sinking, sooner or later sinking, the deck tilting

like thoughts melting, smithereens of glasses glinting,

the same gurgling veins of time blinking…

laughs, tears, shoulder-patting, ghosts clapping..

toast and dance, please one more stance..

before..-c’mon raise that glass- all's well that ends well,

with the whooshing of the sea swell.

SIROCCO SUNDAY

Lashing rain and high water,

Venetian high water, on the banks the grey stones

waver and slither in their lines under the waves.

Rubber boots’ steps slosh forward,

the wind is angry, heavy and wet,

a worn out, dirty, gristle-laden blanket blowing.

I try myths, I figure out Aeolus’ s cheeks

and wallow in swarming gashes of loneliness.
 

Hell is energy, it’s a laden sky shredding eyes

and absorbing wandering memories of redness.
Wearing itself out endlessly in its own vastness.
 

A Sunday trudging on like a bloodless drake.

"Bring Up The Bodies" by Hilary Mantel

I have not always enjoyed the Man Booker Prize winning novels.
But I enjoyed Wolf Hall despite its maybe excessive length and I am enjoying now more, much more "Bring Up The Bodies".
I got to the point where Henry VIII's riding accident at a tournament is described:
absolute, breathtaking vividness of details.
But at every page the word the comes to mind is "immediacy".
Details bouncing up and out towards you in an instantaneous, unique way.
Somebody said that poetry doesn't tell or describe but it happens.
This can be valid also for this kind of fiction which is poetry too.

TUNES

What about those that have breathed

in your heart and blood, in your days’

hue, complexion, dreams and moods,

the unsubstantial pageant you have nodded to,

the “yes” they’ve always made you come down to,

have you become them or they you?

In the puzzle of your time?

Come rain or come shine?

 

And though you have grieved in the silence of the light

you have clung to them, puzzled into their right.

SEA FOAM

 

Where’s anybody?

Stupid question sorry…gone somewhere. As ever.

Taken up by their own busy humdrum.

With, yes, the marvellous always lurking in between.

Everybody is taken up by something.

I, in my sea-shell present time, am taken up

by this business of being alone.

I don’t do anything particularly big or small,

being alone, I just keep living.

I’m alone in my ocean of memories like bones,

or bright ashes, listening to great songs

that are like clouds sailing anyway

or sea foam sweeping over, jingling,

swishing over the bones.

The ashes, the memories and bodies’ flashes.

Its “anyway” washed into the marrow

of this here-and-now that sways.

 

You know well this foam,

this alluring bubble relentlessly blown.

This flowering nothing.

The insubstantial fabric you are born to cherish.

Look at the white-crested waves coming,

at how thoroughly they are absorbed in the sand.

And how they keep coming.

They don’t mind if there’s nobody

who gazes and listens.

HURRICANE

 

A broken crane hanging down amongst skyscrapers,

threatening to fall apart,

a very physical Damocles’ sword

beyond metaphor.

I imagine the persisting shrieking of the weather,

a wrathful unframed mouth

disgorging shrapnel after shrapnel of the world,

the gutters exploding in the dark,

the living daylights wiped out in volleys of angry stars,

rubble blazing into sight, roof-beams dangling

juxtaposed like asterisks, shattered flasks

engorging, later, the silence.

 

A staircase left where a house was,

towering alone, you could walk up on it

climbing into a nowhere.

Questioning the wind

like a dishevelled druid

or a poet stung by

the incomprehensible shards of his lines.

RAIN

It closes us in,

enwraps home, not unlike fog,

this tapping on window-sills,

this sloshing, showering, gurgling,

this curtain of busy needles.

We are maybe closer to each other

separated by it, under lamplight,

under the computer light,

casting reflections into the ether.

 

We were around a fire once

under a rock, telling tales

and casting spells.

The tapping filled the mouth of the cave.

 

I am not sure of what has changed.

ALL I KNOW

 

On this bright day

the lines of the hills shine,

the mountains behind look massive

and undisturbed in the blue.

On the narrow road before the park

there’s that silence that’s a rustling,

the sun and leaves’ fingers playing,

playing but almost still.

Walking I gaze at the asphalt

with the shadows of the leaves

and I think of all I know

and do not  know,

the breath,

ungraspable and familiar,

of things.

OCTOBER SUN

 

It seems weakened, tamed

by the haze.

A harmless disc

welcoming your gaze,

travelling through

a thin layer of clouds,

like ghosts, wisps,

flourishing tongues

of mist.

Feelings like feathers

randomly streaming.

I am just staring

at  their pencil-like lines

in slow reeling.

 

And since I haven’t disappeared yet

I want to say something

about where I was born,

here in this quivering

Venetian light of my own.

Under the October sun,

tamed by

the all-embracing damp.

I am walking now by the canal

on the grey, paved bank,

dots crowding on me,

on my verge:

they show me how I’ll fade, transpire

and merge.

ASIDE

 

 

Far off on the island, out of town,

I pedalled on a gravel path, passing by

an old, restored house,

small, simple, familiar in its Venetian style,

the plaster a full red-brown

like the texture of an oil painting,

you could almost taste it

neat against the quiet morning sky

with by it the still green flame of a cypress.

 

Eternity aside. Mose’s lit bush.

The poet had come across

a miracle like this,

a simple settled light.

But, even he then, had left

and forgotten it.

Going into the straight, absorbing

line of the future, the illusion,

our destiny.

 

I can’t do anything better

except to go back for an instant

to the fullness of a pastel red-brown plaster

and the fiery, airy green of a cypress

that grabbed the wind with a firm fist

and swayed an instant of eternity

into my heart.

TRADITION

Whatever yours is dance to it,

let it sink back

on the amazement of the track,

spreading its stance

in a dance to enhance

the eyes of the land.

Very privately

I am now celebrating my own,

very alone.

In my own den,

sitting still

and letting myself

dance

in my bones.

Listening to an old tune,

time past

“pointing to one end…”

 

I will pass,

a mood, a nod in whatever tune.

The stream will stay.

SIERRA NEVADA REVIEW

I am glad because I have just received the news that Sierra Nevada Review will publish a poem of mine "Travenanzes", a high valley in the Dolomites ,a very dear place to me.

Sierra Nevada Review is one of the print magazines I most enjoyed, it has published my poems twice. The first time in 2003. The issue on that year had probably the best cover photograph I have ever come across: an Asian child laughing and wearing a huge red plastic bubble, a clown's nose probably, on his own.
I remember that two poems of mine appeared in that issue. And I remember how tactfully the editors corrected a spelling mistake I had made, basically clumsily inventing without knowing a verb that didn't exist : "surveil". I remember they wrote: "we are wondering if you want to invent a new word but maybe you meant "survey" or "unveil"? I apologized, thanking them and saying that that was the least it could happen to one who was writing in his second language..and that I certainly meant "survey".

THE SONG

 

It has always been

colouring the seasons

like a lingering gust,

a waft

permeating

this raft.

It unveils

the air’s heart,

with its elusive

half-smiles,

and strewing wishes

sweeping by.

It has always been

dragging you in

looking

casual at first,

coming from afar,

then closer,

like a staring star.

And you always

searching
in its reaches

for its heart.

So familiarly never

fully grasped.

 

Dickensian

I am at last experiencing this adjective in full while enjoying "The Casual Vacancy" by J.K.Rowling. A superb gallery of characters vibrantly connected to one another. Great prose, raw and complex details in every day's comedy and tragedy. I don't mind exaggerating if I say there are even echoes of Shakespeare's clarity in painting clashes of feelings and wishes.
And maybe writing books for boys is the best trampoline for a good first novel for adults.

The best happens when the characters become close to you as friends. And once more you cannot but perceive the world as a stage.

STARS

 

We had a lot to tell each other

after such a long time,

the night fog got brightened by our busy talk

and the candles in the restaurant sparkled,

vowels slid, at ease with the wine,

while we described our projects for the future,

we talked for hours, of everything, even politics,

wanting to be helpful, careful with advice.

Strewing with the night.

We went home then for some menial task

and I felt lightened even while collecting

the rubbish bag.

Walking you back to the bus stop

we felt we had to let something go free,

the dog, who needed her steam off,

she ran straight into a grass field

galloping in circles, in a frenzy

that asked for stars,

watching her we were so electrified

that we almost started to run.

Just before your bus came,

with an exaggerated swing, I hit the bottom

of a huge empty bin with the rubbish bag,

the bag banged loudly, I was sure

it had awakened the stars, some

appeared, actually, behind the fog’s rags

and you too decided it was time

to be exaggerated: “Dear me- you remarked laughing-

where did you throw it? No wonder

things in this country are so bad.”

That’s what beauty is, I thought, after

the measured drops of our voices in the night

we can allow ourselves the luxury

of dashing off with an uncontrolled flourish

sealing up our parting with a further spark

while it finds the lid of the world

and bangs it open.

IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE

I find myself translating

this story of birds, badgers, woods and bushes,

a story for children by a distant relative

plunging me into a distant world,

childhood and all.

But…distant?

As I write this on a whim

or in a further, as I realize,

attempt to define who I am

I feel that nothing has ever been distant or close

among the patchy fields and soppy ditches

I trudged on in lightheartedness or in throes

while laughing and crying and talking

and loving the air swarming,

the world is simply what has always

been here, defying definition,

past and present being nothing

or whatever you like

in the bustle and sameness

of the multifarious grass,
instants swept onward and vanishing
like fists of bright ash.

 

So what remains?
Nothing too unknown,

air, the moment and space,

the glow of this presence like a gaze;

what is, simple and absolute,

in front of your face.

THE TEAPOT

It’s old, that’s for sure. Old silver.

I don’t know how old and where it comes from.

Maybe it belonged to your mother or grandmother

who are now no more. And you are no more.

It stands on the kitchen table, in the sea jumble of it

like a lighthouse on its rock in a sea storm.

I unearthed it one day when my small one broke,

I unearthed it from down under in that huge

cabin of a cupboard, the hoard house you left me.

It looks regal to me, a silver acorn on the lid top

in its rind like a pedestal, like those on gravel paths

in the mountains among pine needles and dirt,

like one of the many thoughts scattered in the world

we keep treading on.

 

My morning tea.

I like brewing in it.

I love starting my day with it,

as if feeling the swaddle of history,

at once bathed in my memory of you.

Oh, the handle. It gets so hot

I always need something to cover it,

a napkin, my own sweater even,

not to get scalded when I pour.

 

I am gazing at it now and breakfast is over,

it looks alone and great, undefeated I dare say.

I gaze at the darker spots on its metal, a sky

that will outlive me.

Nothing really can be grasped of the soul

but it sings, silently, like on this silver

and sits, while we just pass, on its own sea.

GODS

I still see myself with my father
on that day of another age on the church steps
watching two boys in the distance in the snow-field
fighting, rolling, punching each other.
For the first time I was sensing
how violence can be absolute and scaring
but - never confess - I was stung by envy too,
I was not going to be like those two,
I was just a child attending Mass
being kept apart from the wilderness,
the stark realm of punches in the snow, of raging
breath and reddened skin that doesn’t heed the cold.
They were gods those two and I still fear and long
for the heart of their clash, the flash
of the gods’ arms and hands clasping
each other in the snow, the very moments torn
with their gasps in the sharpness
of the livid light and the yells
hushed by the sky.
Picture that moment.


In connection with David King's latest post and his own connection with with Tess Kincaid and "The Mag" with a splendid picture by Salvador Dalì.

"Tempest"

I was glad I could come across "Tempest" by Bob Dylan on the very day it appeared all over the world even if this day is nine eleven.
We know he loves all things sounding fateful.
Amongst the wonders in this new album the final two songs are really breathtaking.
The one before the last consists in an apocalyptic series of characters described in the Titanic sinking at the rhythm of a waltz. It's a stunning fourteen minute song reminding of Desolation Row and leaving a feeling of continuity with the great sixties and for me then with my adolescence.
The last song of the album "Roll on John" on John Lennon is a moving dirge.

At the end of it you hear even, interspersed in a line, a "Tiger, tiger burning bright in the forests of the night..." And you simply rejoice.

Dylan and his own myth are still at one then as far as I feel, very alive and kicking.

Times are not changing much. Good.

IN THE RED

Cells are fast.
And I can’t
stay too much behind.
Cells love their crowd,
for better or worse.
I can't be but
part of them
even if I pretend,
like many of you,
to be beyond and aloof.
Just pretending we even more
become the proof.
So, red wine
and blood.
In the red, the dark red,
in and beyond strife.
In all the explosions
and all that’s resettled
in the pulse of life.
Red wine always
good for the blood.
A thick red
staring
and flowing forward.
I'm drinking now
and getting drunk
on its stamina of "yes".
On my own Moorish wall.
In the sun of the fall,
evening blood
always taking its good toll.

BELLYACHE

It is travelling with me on the train,
flash after flash of landscape,
it’s like that, tummy protesting
for some excess, too much breakfast maybe
and the unavoidable stress.
In contrast with the great
neat, first sunlight of the day, entering
with a fiery stripe on my seat
like an immediate present from the sky;
and out of the window the blooming countryside,
the pure setting for a yogi
quiet and alert in his mind and body,
a bellyache the farthest thing
from his spotless breathing.

Or why not the opposite,
he would breathe with equanimity
all that might come to pass,
my pain at sunrise and the running grass.


This in order to renew my dialogue with David King and, in his latest post, his poem "The Bug in my Gut,"

WHAT'S THERE IN THE SONGS?

I slide into the refrain.
And ages pass.
The songs fill the seasons
giving hue over hue to their skies,
digging through their layers of grey and blue,
doing nothing but passing like ribbons and wings.
How can wings dig in?
What air can sink in like a stone?
Establish a river?

It’s not the words only,
not only “Blowing in the wind”
and “Like A Rolling Stone”….
it’s beyond the lyrics and the tunes,
maybe even beyond the blue in the blues…

The swish of a breath if you like,
both grasping and volatile
light and persisting like a butterfly.

In the wake of some god’s smile,
look at his eyes, how they follow the tune
inventing a further season’s mood.

ABOUT THE BEGINNING

It has always been alluring
like a blank page.
Like the new pens and pencils
on the first day of school,
the glossy smell of the unknown
in the still unopened books.
And it has always been at one
with autumn.
A paradox in a natural way
to begin when the season’s sun sets
with , in the gaze, the bright reds
of the end of the leaves
and the now earlier enveloping
redness of the evening.

A paradox this beginning
with such a distance from spring,
a coincidence maybe
but it can be connected with blood,
this closeness, this streaming of redness,
at one with our pace and pulse,
growing in our own dark,
this pressing sky and skin
we are stuck on.

"Be careful of the little bones"

Rabbit in tomato sauce, as a child
in front of a heaven of fields, in a kitchen
with the window on vineyards, granddad at lunch
with a glass of his own homemade wine.
Light red, full of summer sun.
Full of my gaze.
The past. What’s gone.
Vivid because it can’t be retrieved.
Except for sentences like this:
“Be careful of the little bones”.
At lunch, all of us,
sucking and slurping to the sky,
it was from grandma I think I heard
the first time, these words to granddad,
words like breaths in the haze of time.

And now on an evening a few days ago,
a cousin I hadn't met for ages
cooked rabbit… so ”the little bones…
“careful..”

Maybe the eternal present streams
in words like a mountain spring,
utterance is all.

And words
and “the little bones”
are the same thing.

AND BY THE WAY

A new school year is starting.
And Bob Dylan is going to release a new album.
Good sign?

A recurrence.
Maybe is just great to recur and so keep going.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=160015988&m=160017027

IN BETWEEN

They have just passed. The lines.
Just passed. For the umpteenth time.
They are so fast. Like virtue,
you write of it, the Tao says, when it's no more.

I had them all on the tip on my tongue, and pen.
But
my pen wasn't at hand and
I was too lazy or drunk or normal to look for one at once.

And again, the right thing slurred and blurred
in between the lines of the day,
the present that lures you into words like flashes,
and passes on, leaving you golden and astray.

SHAKESPEARE

Friends booked for me in early August "The Taming of the Shrew" at The Globe.
A sheer delight. The taste of The Globe in the very Shakespearian times was given at the beginning as an impromptu ( I hope this word is right! ) extraordinary performance, as an improvised "live" prologue, out of the script, when, the one who would reveal himself as the main actor later, appeared dressed in a contemporary jumpsuit among the standing crowd by the stage and kept on walking staggering onto the stage, looking totally drunk and riotous and then pissed in a corner. It was, not completely clearly, but clearly enough water what gushed forth but...for a few moments I had thought that this sort of wino was a real one. Outstanding act.
Superb.
Worth writing a poem about it, though very difficult.

And superb the shrew. Great energy, dish-throwing and all that...Richard Burton and Elisabeth Taylor in the film were two gentle birds in comparison...

And before leaving the theatre I found a jewel, this book: "Will & Me" ( How Shakespeare Took Over My Life ) by Dominic Dromgoogle, the Artistic Director of The Globe theatre.
Unputdownable work.

An eagle-owl at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock

Hopelessly submitting

I enclose an email I am sending after reading discouraging submission guidelines and thinking, dear blogfriends, about the titanic energy those few privileged poets who publish a collection must have... I feel very weak thinking of them.

Dear-------, I am an Italian teacher of English. I have contacted you many times in the past, but the contact got somehow always lost, three or four times. It's clear that it's almost impossible for me to submit.
I have anyway finally put together a collection, but I read that you have a list of booked manuscript until 2015.
But if I wait, and live, until 2015, on that year you will have a list until 2018 and so on.
I enclose to this email my manuscript which I also have on print and God, if he likes, will provide.
Life is short.

By the way, I have never heard from you about some poems of mine you told me you had selected in the only message you sent me two years ago.

Anyway, considering our past exchanges, characterized mainly by unanswered messages of mine I doubt I will ever hear from you.

All the same all my best.

Davide Trame
Venice-Italy

AUGUST COMING

...locate the nearest safety exit...
cabin crew ready for take off...
tea or coffee?
And so on.

Beyond that
this
sense of leaving,
of "having" to leave...

maybe to reinforce
the desire
and hope
to come back?

IN PRAISE OF DOUBTS

Your “But..and what if…?” got me.
At dinner, at the narrow table
of this narrow present.
After some silent spell
in the waves of the conversation.
I know your kind of question well,
for ages I have myself
refused to give up doubts.
I have asked and asked
despite life's
shrugging shoulders.

I think I know a lot about asking,
I have digressed by it on meadows and rivers,
I have wavered, meandered, lingered,
with questions I have silvered
currents of grass.

And now look, my doubts,
kites in the air.

Thermals are friendly with Ifs and Buts
up there.