HOW DID WE GET HERE? and other poems by Anna Lombardo

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

I don’t know what went wrong

I don’t know if it was your fault

Or the usual scratch of some human touch

Poisoned sneezes all around my canals

Over the old pompous marble of my city

Then down to the endless slums of the planet

How did we get HERE? You ask,

Surrounded by this victorious solitude

In the streets of our world

And now, I cannot touch you

I cannot hug you

Because I love you so much

No one can hold their beloved’s dying hands

I‘ve heard about those bodies shrouded quickly,

Then driven away like thieves in the night

Be strong, my heart, be strong, my love,

This new pandemic

Has an ancient appetite for us

And its history is a long one

It comes in periodically, some said,

Over our houses, above our lands

We should have remembered

We should have been prepared

We should have

Yes. And now we sing

Each one in their room,

Through rainbows on windows

Yes. And now we come together

And join poetic droplets of words

Breathing, cautiously, all our best little things

Yes, now can we see and scale the walls raised in our brains

Clear the fog covering our eyes

And change the twit tune poured into our ears

Yes, now, yes now, yes

Now that it’s clear how little harmless

It has been to fill only missiles in our barns

Leaving unnoticed the emptiness behind,

And the angry echoes of suffering trees,

Or the black smog of the winding wind

Yes, now, now yes, “people of all faiths, and none”

Venice, Italy, April 6, 2020

First published in “Poetry Planetariat”, Issue n. 4, Spring 2020, World Poetry Movement.

Silent shots

He or she was talking about alliteration

He or she was a student of mine

He or she was repeating a story

He or she was explaining

And I did what I did

Many years ago: walked away

Out of the classroom, the corridor

And went to talk to the lions,

To find the bears,

To see cyclamen, pines

To listen to the whispers of the trees,

Converse with the clouds

I also spent the night with the lambs.

And when I came back

Silently and slowly,

He or She was still there

Talking and repeating the story

And I looked at him/her

At those silent shots in the eyes

And it was at that precise moment

That I screamed and left the classroom

(to them)

Are you happy now?

Reality comes in

the box is unsealed

and you can’t close it – no one is safe

You will remember every

simple detail now

and you are the only one

on this planet I can talk to

Do you believe me? Do you believe?

We are in trouble

there is a hard sun

a heavy rain a troubled wind

a shortage of air

We are really in trouble

Do you know this?

And our children, our future children

never will know about our tenderness,

our smiles, our tears

The box is unsealed

all out, reality is in

There is no future

You did this to all of us

Hope you are happy

Any details, the herd’ s going

slowly, heads down, slowly,

hopeless going, the sides of the river

don’t protect, they are alone as we are

going down, down to the bottom

Willow weeps all the night

Wind hollows all day

Water follows all morning

Weep weep weep

Are you happy now?

All those stars in circle, the ancient

thorny crown

plugged in the head

blood red bloody blood flows

lascivious along the rib

Are you happy now?

Pieces of happy mirrors

fragments of life swallowed by the river

though this font is no good now

trees are dying, pixel pixel everywhere

and you don’t dare to

speak the truth

If this is the end

let it be in your arms

under your spell

your magic scent

as no other theories can help

Happy now?

Sitting under the wise tree

wise man eyes closed

palms opened, thoughts are

circling in vain

the good doesn’t save you

nor go anywhere

Enemies to their own families

enemies to friends

to the beloved ones

and butterflies around balls of fire

in the head

Is the moon still watching?

I don’t deal very well with the unknown

And with the known too

I may be wrong

and Shakespeare, Dante, Pirandello will be gone

your favourite songs gone

all gone

Happy now?

It was 5.30 I promised to be there

I couldn’t make it. Did you read the Bible?

Why did you ask?

People floating face down, children drowned

and God is around, you say, somewhere

Did he stop his father’s hand, his son’s hand, his flock’s hand?

Good Book, and the angels

are pending.

“Where were you when I did it?”

I loved and I’ve been loved, I guess

and now we are all alone

collective solitude under the sky

Are you happy now?

Don’t ask, don’t tell

Trust your enemy

Why don’t trust yourself?

Kick the gates of Eden – did you hear

the Thunder talking? Can you

see the hard sun? And somewhere,

somehow you’ll hear,

you’ll see the city ‘an unmarked

grave’, a tatoo on the wall

I passed by – an unmarked grave

Are you happy now?

Only in distress, you look up

At the sky, we had enough

Of lies

Of West, East, North, South

If this is the end

Let it be in your sweet

sweating embrace, your sinous shape

my love has gone away

and when you are dying for love

it’s the only way to stay alive

hic nunc

and così sia!

Androids everywhere

Newspeak all over you

and nobody talks anymore

shadows embracing shadows

of lost souls

and it goes, it goes nearly for ever

Are you happy now?

The box is unsealed

Your love remains under

My skin I can feel it

I can breath

Love will save

Love will die

Love is what you can give

And take

Love is your resistant heart

Do you know this now?

Anna Lombardo is a poet, translator, critic and cultural organizer who lives in Venice. Her academic work in English includes a Ph.D. from Dublin’s Trinity College, with a dissertation on the marginalization of women’s voices in poetry. She continues to contribute with many translations of English-speaking female poets into Italian . Her poetry collections include: Anche i Pesci Ubriachi (2002); Nessun Alibi(2004); Quel qualcosa che manca(2009). Her critical work has focused on Joyce Lussu, Jack Hirschman e Pasolini, among others. She has been invited to many international poetry festivals such as the ‘San Francisco Poetry Festival’,(USA), ‘ Kritia’ (India), ‘Al Marib’ ( Irak), ‘Festival des Mueres’, (Columbia). Since 2011, she has been the artistic director of the International Poetry Festival La Palabra en el Mundo which is held in Venice every May. She is a contributor to the digital magazine Global Rights, for which she has interviewed six internationally acclaimed women poets https://www.globalrights.info/2017/01/