Tuesday, October 30, 2012

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.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

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.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

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.

Monday, October 22, 2012

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.

Friday, October 19, 2012

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.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

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.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

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".

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

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.
 

Sunday, October 7, 2012

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.

Friday, October 5, 2012

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.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

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.