NINE INCONVENIENT LOVE POEMS – Walter Valeri

English  translation by Pina Piccolo.

 

I

 

In this the moon resembles us

Crescents plucked from its fullness

Growing sorrowful if night bags it in slices

And the sac of time swallows it

Always more astute and cross

 

And still I love you

Lingering at the window

Even if peak by peak

Only a nail of it is left

In the sky in its lonesome climb

And then ignites

 

A quarter is left in the water of courtyards

A quarter on the stained-glass windows exhausted

By light drying up and the time

You said is the moonlight has been put out

 

Perhaps it did exist

And we are already dead

Because we resemble

 

The moon that disappears

And takes us away.

 

 

II

 

Oh father how you are chaff that the wind selects

 

You were bread bran and food beyond hunger

Here at home where you shouted

Inside the night and beyond the dark

 

Broken by anger and obsessed by flour. You were

A servant and you spoke to your son

Of a body thin with the growth of it’s soul

 

With pity at every shameful fault of yours.

What hard truth is your wisdom

Son of a servant and of the Rose

 

You taught me not to spit at the table

To look squarely in the eyes of a friend

With tenderness at the breasts of a bride

 

What harsh and lively flower without escape

You have come this far shouting

In the sign of your father and he of his father in you

 

So that a voice would grow in he who is seated and writes

Meek and ferocious our new history. Oh father

How you are chaff that the wind selects

 

How like you am I

As death labors to distance us.

 

 

 

III

 

I would like to sleep mother of mine

In this room tapped by the wind

And by the lucid sounds of wrought gates

 

Protected while it is your eyes

Your blue eyes

That hold my forehead

And my lips as cheerful petals

Among the cold dragnet of leaves

That speak blow (do you still hear them?)

And take the thoughts for a stroll

In the dead and desert corners of the alleys

 

And finally say: I fear I so fear

The werewolf who causes the ultimate fear.

 

 

IV

 

I love you with the same inhuman green

Of eyes that know not how to close

 

Or like the water that carries the living wave

In the silver mirror the brown of your hair

Shines loose

 

Upon our respite. You

Look at me again and again

And always: one can never lose sight

Of that which has never left.

 

Come rest

Like the rose in the king’s garden

In this house more humble

That sails without heft

Escaping the storm of the light switch.

 

 

 

V

 

to my kids

 

Ode to the merry song of Alissa

Fanfaring along with happy notes in her head

Dancing, forgetting the anxiety of Latin

Making herself beautiful for us every morning

 

Ode to the suave irony of Michael

Nocturnal pianist casted as the tender

Morning in yellow garb

Who I spy and admire on the terrace

 

Ode to the astonishing drawings of Adrian

With his sacred meridian of pity for the little bird

Fallen and then resurrected

Like the pages of humanity’s chorus

 

Ode

And gratitude for these children of mine.

 

 

VI

 

Take the future as it comes

(dear Witkiewicz ) kicking it and cursing you

Your still being here

Among us enragedly repeating for the love of words

The daily switching on and infecting the net

Evermore and completely driven by excess of goodwill

 

Then, as you know, the system collapses in a puddle

Of vexation and blood.

Flying low

From file to file faster than light – slicing

Horny

The void that (as you know) has no lips enters

Your message sideways

Taking away its sense and then: they are all comet bubbles

Belly-up

Vowels on the mines of the heart

A mirage with a shear dropping screen each portal or

Point of anchor.

 

Of the whole brood of baby eagle

Tsoott… tsoott… tsoott don’t spare

Even a piece of smooth eggshell, not even a

Feather

 

While the tragicomic virus belly flops circulating on his own

From the transmitter like a comic book on the screen

Of pain

On the Pentium 3 or in those who with their hurricaning

Circular hands

Wishing for death and already enjoying it: divine

Telecommunicative pity

 

I know it the bloody texts are like wire

And your black hair like precise

Warnings of demise

Keys

Oudible howling in the steel of the snare the wails

Of a computer

 

In the newborn century ever untamed.

 

 

VII

 

How about

Eating, for example, some fish and chips

Or a couple of cherries this morning

So as to break the fast

Or transgress our penance

By the seaside

 

The fasting of lips

And getting lost in the infinity of roaring shouts

Beyond the cliffs

With the anatomy of an infinitive verb

Upon us.

 

 

Alexandretta

 

Inappropriate love poem

 

You are a keyboard with excited nipples

Blessed blaze of musical curls

Under the asphalt of turned off cellphone

 

You are Cassandra’s shadow and then Alexandretta

Stoic city with an unattainable mouth

The blade of refusal that cut the Sun god’s loins

 

You’re the pink sex on the mole’s nose

Restlessly digging to reach your little breasts

And more than butter the back of your violin

 

An eel of fragrant waters in the dimple of your thighs

You’re Paganini, Mozart, Dionysus ‘ear in the cave

While you scratch my breath with your solo pieces

 

You’re the shadow of a volcano with its stony leaves

Smiling in your airy bareness in my barren room

Paper and light like a scorpion with a tiger’s teeth.

 

 

 

To an unhypocritical English reader

 

It sets sail visibly

Decimated defeated as

The page is turned or burned

 

This short collection (this anthology)

Of fragile ravings: here to you I dedicate

Gentle unhypocritical reader because in the madness

You always kept a lamp

Burning with lucid irony.

 

Here is the small tribute due to you

Where I got wrapped up.

A useful waste that shifts away

From the unscathed figure:  you do with it

Whatever you will.

 

 

Some of these poems were published in Italian in La Macchina Sognante N. 5 and N. 6  .

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Walter Valeri is a published poet, playwright, and scholar. His collection of poetry Canzone dell’amante infelice was awarded Italy’s national literary prize, the Mondello. Most recent poetry collections Ora settima (Societa’ Editrice “Il Ponte Vecchio”, 2013) My Name/Il mio nome (qudu, 2015) Parodie del buio (Societa’ Editrice “Il Ponte Vecchio”, 2017). Valeri has also translated several dramatic, fiction, screen, and poetry texts into Italian, including Which Side Are You On? by Ken Loach, Carlino by Stuart Hood, Les Aveugles by Maurice Maeterlinck, The Memory of War by James Fenton, Knepp and Krinsky by Jorge Goldenberg, Adramelech by Valère Novarina, Nobody Dies on Friday by Robert Brustein, Eight Poems by Sam Cornish, The Dear Remote Nearness of You by Danielle Legros Georges (in collaboration with Pina Piccolo), and Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo (as a new American translation, in collaboration with Robert Scanlan). He is one of the editors of Italian online literature and culture journal www.lamacchinasognante.com.

 

 

Featured image: Photo by Melina Piccolo