MOBILE

On the train, early in the morning,

you sit on your seat,

very alone.

It’s so clear on such an hour

your being alone,

on the day’s bare bone.

So you start fumbling

with your small glass

portable home..

touch, touch, touch,

slide and touch,

so much.

This screen, the moral

at your disposal.

This smooth log,

this starlit

bog.

 

Slide, slide on

this shiny pool, dear,

no matter how far off you are,

no matter how astray,

slide and touch, it’s clear

you are not dead yet, or so you say.

BOTTICELLI'S MOMENT

All right, winter kept us warm

with forgetful snow

but it’s clear now we can’t

forget anything, it’s clear

that forgetfulness is

the wild geese

we remember,

while we wave

and then merge

with this flowering,

memories of the first

sun of ours, where we

have never stopped dancing,

seeing, though

veil after veil,

skin and sky behind..

we can’t be quiet then,

we can’t keep silent

and no layer

is forgetful enough,

earth is our best

transpiring stuff,

our bright, spangled

aftermath,

hear our shuffle,

let our veils brush you

while we stare and soar.

PIAZZALE ROMA

 

Not saying goodbye to each other, not yet..

I have always enjoyed lingering

a little longer, waiting for a while,

knowing more and more

that it always comes, the time.

On a spring evening, talking about

what’s really important in life,

what must be pursued, longed for,

discovered, grabbed, held tight.

And set on a long, bright path.

A flowering lane.

 

Finding, for the last minutes,

a new wooden bench embracing a green patch

on the asphalt where cars wait,

where a world shakes hands, pats shoulders, waves.

“Until next time..”

 

And we, saying that there is no time,

and one is always getting older…, we, just

assessing the obvious, but never too obvious…

 

being in April at last, on its sweet blade,

cherry blossoms cheering the air

in its swishing, spread-out stare…

 

and they are just over there,

(I am almost pointing them to you,

the horizon being now so near)

the wishes waiting for their

wisteria moment,

wishes spoken and unspoken,

just spawned and sparkling

in their alluring tasks,

their calls like the swallows’,

trimming shrieks in the air

in the lengthening dusk.

 

I say to you then “Bye, have a good evening..”

feeling conscious and lost 

in all the day’s final rustling.

 

“Until next time..” Another spring then,

with a haze to long for..

saying to it an umpteenth yes

 

and earth in slashing greenness.

 

 

Piazzale Roma is Venice "Bus Station", the place, in a way, at the beginning, or end, of the city where cars and buses arrive and can't go any further.

COMING THIS FAR

 

The hour, early afternoon and vast light rain.

In the solitude of the cabin, shingles

rattling in the slightest gust of damp wind.

It’s still going to be a long Easter day, assessing

silence and everything that can’t stop resurrecting.

It’s strangely alluring because it’s so unavoidable

trying to balance one’s own tips, finding

a temporary but wholly satisfactory “that’s it”,

poking honestly one’s own inner peevish gutter.

The shingles twinkle in the light silver drops.

Among the droplets crowding your heart’s view

and the echoes: “after coming this far what

will you ever do?”

The wave crests, the foam, the crumbling

tigers’ ghosts rolling forward, perpetual Prufrocks

looking for revenge, resurrecting in the trench.

Are we made only of fragments?

Syllables and bodies waiting and then transiting?

Various Vladis and Gogoes sitting on shingles

in a lull in between the rush hour and the night?

With the tree so suddenly blooming into spring?

Blossoms blaring and our hearts, as ever, late

shuffling onward after being stuck on our

cobwebs of crossroads?

Or it’s just a lie, the Golden Age, this

lighting of fools to the dusty all that.

Maybe it has always been like this, the bedraggled

director of the orchestra trying to arrange harmony

out of an improvised accolade of violins

while scrutinizing the canopy of rain at the horizon,

the tigers flaring the longing torches of lost reigns…

oh dear me, dear me…how badly I would like

to get settled in longing, accepting

the twinkling lure from down there,

surfing the Trades, in sleep and prayer.

 

Maybe I already posted this in the past. It's one of those rants in the wake of some voices from past masters, with Vladimir and Estragon in particular in mind, these powerful inventions of Beckett's, the two characters the poem I found in David King's blog brought back to my mind.

FLAMBOROUGH, LIGHTHAVEN

The huge window connects you

with land and sky,

a stretch of still dry winter grass

and trees and shrubs until

the horizon and the sea behind,

a picture of waving lines

settled in their own flourish

in widespread permanence

with clouds that are

present as a wholeness behind the glass

claiming most space ( it’s their right),

claiming and obtaining wholeness,

the picture of a staring breath,

what you find yourself staring at

with no particular plan in mind,

with no purpose for once, nothing

to forward or realize,

you are just mutely drawn into the stare

and you stand and watch over there

the fat woodpigeons, two alert deer

and some cruising wild geese,

the moment’s lease,

the space where this is what comes to pass

behind a frame of double-glazed glass,

a further pageant you have come across,

the world transiting in transfixing nonchalance

with you and me, the living and the dead,

transiting too, in thread after thread..

and all the rest goes unsaid.

PRIME

Subtle and sprightly

spring’s fists,

they are there

in the fields,

like tight stares,

branches in shades

of rose and white,

earth’s prime,

apple, peach

and cherry flowers,

these the brightest,

sparkling under the rain,

telling that even if

you have been torn

inside for so long,

you can’t stop wishing

to be born.

SPRING, ISN'T IT?

Still, stilettoes of snow

shot from the sea,

the winter’s tail on the rampage,

night crossed by

whooshing swarms

of needles of ice.

But now it’s morning

and the huge window

is flooded with light

reminding of an already ripe

midday in the sky.

I look at the time, six a.m.,

just dawn, surprise.

Spring, isn’t it?

I go back under the sheets

gazing, on the window panes,

at spring’s sweet pains,

the longed-for cruelty

of buds and soft rain,

memory and desire’s blades.

And I am plunged,

sensing the umpteenth “nevertheless”,

into the sun’s weaving wishes,

our bright mess.

BEMPTON CLIFFS

Busy vastness,

wind a blade

unframed,

its Anywhere

hits,

its palm passes

and stays,

reddens your skin

and the flimsy trim

of your being.

 

Shrieking

rocks’ cheeks

and gliding wings

popping out from just

underneath.

They hang, they go

while you…

well, you are cold now,

you must leave,

must go inside

for some warmth,

a coffee, a chat,

leave, leave

the wind, the birds,

the horizon and

the breathing Beyond

in its parenthesis. 

It’s what you must do,

it’s normal,

in order to live

you leave eternity.