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.