Excerpts from Alessandro Brusa’s poetry collection “L’amore dei lupi” (Perrone 2021)

You are like a cloud on the land that is sand to me

and on the shape (that I anxiously seek)

I cast a glance at myself

and my own feet

enmeshing our limbs

and the edge of this mattress

that remains a space of fullness in the world

of our lives

: because I shall make you roots of glass

to touch the earth

and I will lift you

to the pavement of a new path

p. 20

I don’t know where all this silence comes from
and this sweetness seems to appear out of spite

erasing years of anger and months

of restless survival

to your absence

I was so good at turning the page

that on the new page I can’t help but draw that

first smile of yours

in the journey to the volcanic

island

and like it, we too went dormant
and like it too, we surrounded ourselves with jellyfish

after lowering our ancient love into the sea

p. 29

You come floating in my dreams

wandering about you take the contours of the people

with that beaten dog look the grey fur

and that inconvenient way of doing of who those who are inconvenient in the world

not victim but sacrificial lamb of himself

driven to the darkest corners of the body by his own

thoughts

to set you free one would have to enter the lion’s cage

and uproot the bars

to get you out of that prison of bones

one would need to devour your heart

p. 32

We scatter lives and existences sins

and failed acts

we are ourselves when we are another

when we are the full wave that abates

and raises a summer wind in the middle of winter

we change to stay the same

we change to survive ourselves

p. 35

14.

Bitten by a tangle of snakes,

each more poisonous than the next,

I have erased dunes deserts and ancient towers,

cities that bloomed from sand, skyscrapers and valleys drowned in

pagodas,

I have erased entire maps so as not to feel the pain

the betrayal you have

raised inside me

and sown within my

bared heart

: because you never loved me

if not of a sickly kind of love

p.40

A wolf away this is the way we are hand in hand

on a Seattle street warmed by your gaze

and too soon frozen by the Alaskan winds

that have taught you distance

and the lost horizon of tribes that go north

to become acquainted with the cold of history

the same cold that you sought while holding me

tight and promising me what you

didn’t know how to give

I remain here suspended with two wolves in my heart

and another mark on the body

more ink to convey a howl that I write

so I can lock it in the ocean that shall separate us

once more

p. 47 *

you shall not find ties

and you shall not find weights to weld the action

you will find attention in my gaze just above the nape

to hold a light love from behind

we will then be two stray dogs in the wind

we will taste each other’s tongue on the street

erasing useless glances

from a private silence

and what if our lives were nothing else but this?

: but kissing on the streets of the world and […]

[…] and possessing each other would no longer be necessary

[…] and belonging would even be this

p. 54

so strangers to one another we mark our skin

dwelling in the same body

divided only by a hasty judgment

a ring lost at sea a curse to be loved

because love is a bygone time

: it is a bitch

gifted to the partner

, another ring

slipped on the finger

A Maenad not a monad is your essence

that as a trawl catches me among the people

you surround yourself with for a loneliness that is not mine

[this is the way I shall learn your kisses from peoples’ lips]

you escape spaces by measuring the precise distance from your

own self

for you are the space that

you cannot escape

and that will be enough for your universe

as you invade galaxies and constellations

that are not me

pp. 55-6

I feared that the pain had lost the way for me

that the snake. had swallowed its tail

tearing to shreds

every new impossible step

all it took was a bachata

a beat drummed on your teeth

a motionless step

trusting was all it took

embedding two hearts in one chest

and feeling how fear kills

before being able to tie the sea together again

p.94

Tearing each other apart

like beasts in the temple

and thinking each time that the hunt is endless

to lose the throat quit looking for the vein

lay down your bow and arrows drive away the roles

and in the end scatter the prey and the mirror

that gives it its name

: then smell you

and understand that the war is over

Alessandro Brusa was born in Imola in 1972 and has been living in Bologna (Italy) since 1976. He made his literary debut with the novel Il cobra e la farfalla (Pendragon – Bologna 2004), which was followed by two collections of poetry La raccolta del sale (Perrone – Rome 2013, Orlando prize) and In tagli ripidi (nel corpo che abitiamo in punta) (Perrone – Rome 2017) and the novel L’Essenza Stessa (L’Erudita – Rome 2019). In 2015, together with Martina Campi and Valerio Grutt, he promoted a project on the Bolognese poetry scene that led to the publication of Centrale di Transito (ceci n’est pas une anthologie) (Perrone – Rome 2016). His latest work is the poetry collection L’Amore dei Lupi (Perrone-Rome 2021).

His poetry and prose texts have appeared in anthologies and magazines, both in print and online, both in Italy and, in translation, in the United States, France, Belgium, Romania, Spain and Latin America.

He accompanies the work of writing with that of translating from English with texts published in online and print magazines (Testo a Fronte, Le Voci della Luna, La Macchina Sognante, Poetarum silva, Nazione Indiana). With rare exceptions, he chooses young poets he discovers through his own library research rather than official academic channels, especially local libraries, those in the United States, Great Britain and India. Among the authors he has translated: Brian Borland, Jericho Brown, Kayo Chingonyi, Kamala Das, Safia Elhillo, Jemima Foxtrot, Colin Herd, William Letford, Stephen Mills, Seth Pennington.

Since its first 2013 edition, he has been part of the organizing committee for the Bologna In Lettere Literary Festival with a focus on poetry. Since 2020, he has been on the editorial board of LitBlogi www.crackerspoesia.it