“Don’t exile me from your mist” – Five poems by Ferruccio Benzoni

Blue and Gloomy

 

The sea is that blue and gloomy thing

you and I one day sailed through,

which then enveloped us with other

enchantments, shipwrecks, and tenderness,

turbidly disappearing.

 

Don’t say any more, “I feel like an idiot and a fool,” and I,

I (it’s Saturday) afterward I’ll disappear in the bitterness of my heart.

I will be stealthily drinking wine amid the fumes and

my aunt will still be sighing and saying: “Will you take my drops upstairs, will you?”

You no longer live for the god and the anger of me, that dream

(remember?) of mice in the attic, of cardboard and beams.

 

By now, other dreams are turning you away, yet

blue and gloomy the sea (love) because

it never dies—that thing which you alone were to me

so vast, excessive, elemental.

 

 

 

 

Marquetry of Light

 

I think about it: my life is a hypothesis of

clouds torn apart at a window: roaming distracted

more often agonizing they scratch

the black window panes of sunlight.

The translucent sky of another life

never crossed over—I wonder if

it’s my life, or an image, yet alive.

And the window as a marquetry of light

where I cannot, is listening to me living fiercely,

and wounding me with its green, poisonous blade of grass.

My distress is an impossible grace

of getting along with you and loving you. But it’s a lie—

you say that—this reason ripped apart, the error

of a transcribed I, almost an unreal crime.

But if the stars are also lights, and the flower

Is also smell and color, then I…

I was yours too, love, squirrel and teeth

tongue and kidneys of my horrified rose.

But if my life is a hypothesis—

clouds torn apart—the nape of your neck is a dream, a rare dream

by a darkened goldsmith who used to love

brassy hedges and pulp. In this way

I brush by you in the fall

haggard branches and thin torment—you,

crackling laughter and nerves, you so bitter, little bone of mine.

 

 

Appendix to ‘A You Not Hypothetically and Dear’

 

I must tell you that I don’t lack water

or bread or a bed to lie on exhausted.

Not even a woman with breasts and sea weed.

I don’t lack a revolutionary street

or a café with harmonious chit chat.

Nor the privilege of idle contemplation

while the season outside changes color

and the ivy takes root with senile cunning.

I desire things unloved and alive

—not dreams evocative keyboards—because

love, the imponderable, they live

stolen and faded only in you.

Inside your face devotion is born

from my loneliness. You did not absolve me

when I asked for an exemption from that lump

of anguish I am grafted to.

Love is not a blind boy, violated.

There is a logic of profit even in love.

So because of love I keep contradicting myself.

 

 

 

After the Wrath

 

Sunlight at the window.

A sea floor of scales opening up

after a downward flight…

Au ralenti that never ended

a never ending dive

over and over in my mind,

cuddled nested; featherless.

You keep telling me to walk

(too hell with your joints!)

-make yourself join the crowd that infested

that plagued alive tunnels

of sedimentation and delirium.

But tell me, how can you limp

after the angels, how can you trade

a larva of sunlight at the window

for buds that ooze from the branches

the breath of soggy hay—

those window panes streaked with water

that only yesterday were at rest in a loving frost.

 

 

 

The House by the Sea

 

-How long has it been since you saw him?

-Three years after…

-After my death?

-Three years

 

The time turned still.

It was rinsing away a quiet stunned unhappiness,

without yearning.

 

-And you?

-O not me, you, wispy fog…

-The snow coats me that settles

frozen on my ice

like a wife, a dove without desires.

Remember me, listen to me

beyond the window,

waiting for another winter to dream of

your spirits still alive and speaking alone.

 

-Don’t exile me from your mist.

Take this last request of mine.

Take it, repeat it

(don’t exile me…)

slowly with me, repeat it.

As a glowing young woman

bending her knees beside a cradle.

-How many dark tumbling clouds

In the winter winds will you have loved

blushing.

 

With the veiled lips

of night I nodded a regretful goodbye

dreaming of a flickering light on my thin hair

(I remember) mowed down.

 

For an introduction of the poet, see in this issue http://www.thedreamingmachine.com/the-poetry-of-ferruccio-benzoni-by-taylor-corse-and-enrico-minardi/

 

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