AND SO

And so, the canal

where you fell in,

like a terrible dream…

I pulled you out, you were drenched

and cried and were angry, right,

with the stupid tourist that

for all the carelessness of the world

for her hurry or God knows,

pushed you in.

You, floating there,

what a scare,  

what a preposterous suddenness,

but in my memory you soon were

in a pool of light.

Memory, fear, loss

and the multifarious pools of silence.

But when I passed by the canal,

the green pool of water lightened my heart.

It did, so. Nevertheless it did,

despite the anger after our row the next week,

despite the memory of me leaving

among the whooshing cars.

Despite the cries and the miles

of asphalt between me and you,

despite feeling I could never see you again,

despite the pools of silence,

the sense of  lingering nothingness.

And so, the memory

and the words in this early darkness

and your voice on the phone

and the pools of hours and days

in which I am floating, in a way,

like you were, in the green canal.

Or on the roads upon which I slide

like a whooshing question.

In the pool of this moment,

with  in my heart

the memory of your face.

Your cheekbones I trace.

 In this pool that becomes a sea.

 

And so. 

ZATTERE OLEANDERS

Perpetual reminders.
The red ones, you know, impress most.
But the others too, the gentle
sweep of the rose, the gentle gaze
that rides on and would call upon,
just in case.
They gently twist
in the lulling hints
of their own mist.
They sparkle on a dry day.
And they do not remind
of anything you want to define now,
you just stand in their airy touch
and try to learn to enjoy
not to wish more, not to wish much.

Orbis 167

My poem "Notes While Travelling Across The Lagoon" has appeared in Orbis 167. I am happy of being again in the magazine that published me first fifteen years ago.

IMPRESSIONIST

Gusts. Transiting skies,

while I’m leaving, entering the train station,

struck by brushstrokes

of swollen grey, with that severe

tiger’s stare in the air

and on the canal’s skin a running,

skidding patch of angered ripples.

The downpour, as ever, is biding its time

on the platform, a matter of seconds.

In the meanwhile the electric board

by the railway gives no sign, no time

of departure, it’s empty

like the railway tracks, and the question

in the eyes of a growing crowd, waiting.

You stand by the luggage, I go to the office

for information.

And here I am, by a glass door,

it doesn’t open, I knock, the knocking

is unheard because of the booming thunder I’m sure,

and the downpour that has come, just now,

and we are, as ever, fretting in its roar.

Finally I’m in and ask: “The train?”,

they say “Hang on…”, ceiling and walls

filled by the thunder’s growls,

they check, they phone, and then say:

“It will come. “ “Which platform?”

“Listen to the loudspeaker.”

I leave, you are among a big crowd now,

brushstrokes of glances in the rain,

on the empty tracks, shiny

with shafts of water.

We gaze at the electric board, we try

to intercept the right voice in the interlacing

echoes from the loudspeaker, I tap

the shoulder of a man in a uniform,

“Have you got any idea when…?”

“I am the conductor” he says “it’s coming,

give me just ten minutes.”

The stormy light flickers on his cheeks.

Just give me time. All we come down to.

Time. Brushstrokes of time.

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.   

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.

BY THE SYBIL

Yes I’m sure that whether we like it or not

our innermost gaze is turned

to the cave and the rock,

to their maze filled with vast

preparatory silence.

Now we are facing it and waiting

for the gesture of words.

It is even more silent, the mountain grass

where the rock lies.

And when the sun hides

the green seems to have absorbed all cries,

short stalks in the wind, each in its berth,

impenetrable and alert.

Rough essentials, a shower of rain

and soon the rock is dry again

and the grass greener in the cleansed hush.

Since it’s midday we stop

and unpack our lunch and sit on the rock

and eat and digress in the wind,

talking.. we love its insubstantial stream.

Silence is deeper after we have talked

when we wait a little before resuming our walk.

Silence is the rock and the wind

and the very words we forgot, or can’t quite admit

we were waiting for.

The words within the words,

the riddle we would cherish,

the ultimate mirage maybe,

the swarming clap of a stony outburst.

Cows are grazing in the pasture nearby,

we hear bells clang in the chapping jaws’ lull.

Our dog is crouched, enjoying the grass,

munching stalks with meditative nonchalance.

The rock doesn’t speak,

the cave moans in its draughts,

we hardly expected anything different

but we indulge by the stone, maybe this

is the only purpose we have time for,

wind bending the grass,

the large invisible sweeping hand,

while  clouds’ shadows sail

and stalks thread the gusts

in trimming cells like tinkling bells,

flicker-lit, in and out of the land,

on moss and mulch,

ready to hook our next

scattering selves.
And there'll be only the wait.

WHISPERED PRAYER IN A GIORGIO DE CHIRICO'S SQUARE

How deep the blade of the North wind.
How it empties the silver square.
It shatters every rind
with the loneliness of nowhere.

Let these words stare
like the grains of a last dust,
to that cone of light, run, over there,
the dream corner you trust.

VENICE, CAMPO SAN NICOLO' DEI MENDICOLI.

A warm winter Sunday.

Breaths in almost

suspended droplets.

Muffled silence by the church,

the Sunday silence of dampened steps,

air testing its own hazy indulgence.

I sweat after the walk. Sirocco fills me.

The swollen sky’s cheeks.

Here the city ended once,

stretched in front there was only

the lagoon expanse

in patches of sandbars.

Bare flatness

and flourishes of ripples.

And oars dipping in

and the boats’ wood whining

in the clouds maybe more than now

slow, big and palpable.

In silver grey

just after the rain.

Something merging

with the spreading forth

of a birth, the utterly strange

and the utterly familiar.

And now I know

I could perspire myself

into what’s next.

WINTER GARDEN

Earth carrying the silence inside and beyond.

It’s a rainy winter afternoon,

the turf spongy underfoot,

the trees have been pruned,

branches become thick stubs the colour of smoke,

neat and naked in the sky’s pearly wait,

tall, lush trees that had been towering

beyond the roof, their bareness now,

their countenance, like wrists and fists

pointing at some high dot in the distance,

calls us back to order, necessity,

the spare tune of roots and soil.

Tall trees. And the new ones

just planted, the cherry-tree, the fig, the apricot,

with all their promising, budding future

now just thin, flimsy things, a silhouette of twigs,

I gaze at the grey earth mound with at the centre

the hole they have been stuck in.

The rain falls,

the vast and close stare,

breath of air.

It will be evening soon, then

the future.

I won’t see many of its fingers

but some are already here, just underfoot.

And low clouds over the silence.