Wednesday, April 9, 2014

SPRING IN THE JUNKYARD


I am looking at the tree
that a couple of years ago
was only a stalk there, in the corner.
It was a garden once, this space
in front of my kitchen window,
just weeds now, weeds and garbage bags
and a disused fridge from the bar
that closed ages ago.
No noise downstairs then by now, only the forlorn
perspective of whatever might be born.
And this tree, in this small
frame of wilderness, or a reminder of bereavement;.
a tree that’s a tree, three storey high by now,
so lean and tall, beautiful all in all,
the casual allusion to agile limbs
and a nimble life within, an offer
to the sky above.
On the tips of the thin branches
buds have recently appeared
that now are already small leaves
that seem to know what they want:
they gaze at my gaze and tease.   

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

THE PHOTOGRAPHS


What remains, scraps of time,
some scraps of mine.
There is silence in the hot afternoon,
a still bubble of heat outside,
the motionless pines, inert branches
except for some random sirocco gust,
the dry grass singing, cicadas searing the grass
and sandbar fever on the skin,
by the slow, perennial, marshy green.
Scraps of time.
I rummage the cupboard and find them
in boxes, albums, envelopes,
inside magazines, even in an old wallet,
the leather worn out to a shine,
with the consistence of linen, almost a gauze,
scraps of time that consume and leave you
staring at slivers of light, staring for the soul
or the breath of all burnt gold, the ore-
I start looking at them, time’s scraps,
these pictures of bygone, bypassed existence
of various shapes and consistence,
these faces recurring, a century ago,
the black and white that looks
both essential and elemental
and rich, expectant in a way,
young cheekbones, at their prime,
enthusiast of being there
in their own living rhyme,
with in front what we believe they believed,
a neat plain, a spread of time,
with these wide, thorough smiles
in the present cicadas’ light now,
light of silence in which I keep looking

and find a few, more recent, colour,
here, me and her, I had forgotten these,
probably never seen them before,
and I forget the others at once, I stare
at the simple drama of what
was there and is no more,
I look in her smile for what
I want to last anyway,
I look and look
and sink in the armchair
and sink in the sky.