JUST A PREFACE

Let's try to be slow and steady

in this silence, her silence.

Let's try to sing the wood

with the branches,

in their breath and 

perspiration of loneliness.

Let's try to improvise

another sun and sea

and abandon

the familiar, impending

sense of drowning.

Let's embrace silence,

her silence, let's embrace

the crime and rhyme

of that silence.

And let's dare

bash hush and shush,

and cry high ash

to the sky.

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.

FIR TREE

Once I smelled in it

the fullness of iron green

and was gripped and swept

into a road of breaths

and shuffling dark green.

The deep North in an instantaneous gust.

Now that smell is faint,

like childhood, only a memory.

 

But all the same I keep

breathing it

sensing I am treasuring

the few drops I can gather

from the forest sap

in my cupped hands.

More than enough

on the way to the border.

A Christmas present.

The Christmas present I have just received comes from Tucson, Arizona. It is the issue n.22 of the magazine "The Laughing Dog, strictly poetry". In it my poem "Brewing" appears, a poem that, to tell you the truth, I had almost forgotten and quite neglected. It has been a pleasure rereading it and enjoying it a lot almost as if it weren't written by myself.
What's more, in this tiny, sober and beautiful magazine I am in the company of some very famous poets I used to "meet" in journals several years ago, at the beginning of the internet reign when still most submissions and publications were print. Some names : Lyn Lifshin, BZ Niditch, Valentina Cano and probably the most famous of all, Simon Perchick.
So to those who live in the US and might come across this post I recommend "The Laughing Dog".

A SMALL SPIDER IN DECEMBER

 

I have just caught a glimpse of it,

it has disappeared now under a picture,

tiny legs progressing, tiny

hints of forwardness.

Tiny but well defined.

Gracefully ineluctable.

For me an appreciation

of the warmth in my home

Since it’s almost winter outside

with freezing fog in a spreading bite,

so I can’t but like feeling I have

an oasis inside that grows

hosting life.

 

I think it’s just

what you want to last

in the end, of your home,

listen, maybe now you can fade

but this cherry-wood table

you are sitting at will remain

with a picture of Japanese gardens

at this side, on the wall

and a tiny spider staring under,

like a meaning beyond the soul.

BLUE GLACIER

You didn’t want to say anything.

You waited. When you spoke at the end

you could still hear the silence in between the syllables,

a blue glacier.

One of the few left. You felt glad.

It’s here now. You are walking on it,

each sentence swarming and dying into its solidity

so as not to let it melt.

THE COLD

 

It has come like a tale

whispered in

draughts' dreams

and chinks crashed

with air and stare,

the wind whooshing

all the way in.

The square is stark.

The space clean.

The land vast.

I, a sledge in the mind

and an ark in the heart,

freeze and slide.

NOVEMBER 2nd, BIRDS AT DAWN

 

Dark and low clouds outside

and the shuffling of leaves on leaves,

from the oak, rusty hue, dusty orange.

I’m in bed, shutters closed,

I am awake, I know it’s early

and I lie in the wake of my having been

early for ages, waiting for whatever

bides its time.

Dark and still, I sense the low clouds

in the absence of wind.

The countryside and its stare,

the scattering and gazing of here into there,

maybe I began as a digressing child

giving a face to the countryside,

eyes breathing, seeping into skin,

earth in its damp progressing within

and eyes crediting marvels, unseen,

loving the familiar unknown, within.

Now I am hearing a sound that’s almost a sting,

but it’s soon clear it is a close chirping

like tatted lace in the shutter

indulging in the fabric of its own matter.

The dark filling with fingers of light,

the chirping like an audible smile,

even now, on the year’s decline:

I can’t but believe in what begins.

MATTER

 

The stick your dog picks up on the street

looking back at you while walking,

eyes warm, alert and amused,

in his mouth a trophy to expose,

a clean, honed prey to carry about,

you would never have seen it,

and once he drops it another comes up

instantaneously, you never see him

picking it up and there is no

magician’s trick, just the quick walking,

this new one is even more honed

and white, like marble, and sharp,

a blade the moon has polished

together with the teeth now brandishing it,

it must have been so alluring and near,

it’s now what the skin of the soul reveals

piercing each second with what really is.

THE SNAIL

Stuck up on the inside of the shutter,

on my fist floor,

it has climbed and climbed

I suppose, slowly up on another

Mount of Fuji carrying with itself

what’s most holy,

the marvel and endurance

of what perseveres, slowly.

Certainly enjoying the damp

foundations, the mood

of this weather and time.

droplets of lines rising on lines.
 

Now it has been days,

stuck for days, looking like

it has found its own

among the many ways.

I gaze at the glistening

brown of its home,

will it last on the shutter

through the winter?

Well, it’s on the inside,

just  like a gaze staring in

and asking for what

we all ask for:

a bit of lastingness

and praise.

 

I dedicate this poem to my colleague and friend, and poet writing in Venetian dialect, Andrea Longega,  to whom I have first spoken of this snail during the umpteenth tired and tiring journey on a tiresome train back from school towards Venice.

Half amused, hearing about the snail he exclaimed (in an impossible to describe Venetian tone) : “And now you are going to write a poem on it, we can’t expect anything different, can we?”

Digital

  Now at school everything is digital, no paper registers any more. And the digital legal signature. The absurdity is to call it signature when for a signature you generally need a pen with which you produce letters, in other words you need write! In this case you click. You click-sign on your name, No words for that. Maybe an adjective. Ridicule, And another. Insubstantial. The virtual world is more and more a baseless fabric, a sense of no ground under your feet.

A dramatically increased volatility of being. More than an unbearable lightness. Where are we going, in any field, with the progress of digital dictatorship?

I have just sent this text message to a colleague:

 

Digital signature and all,

what can I tell?

An endless fall

into a bottomless well.