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 https://www.thedreamingmachine.com/the-poetry-of-ferruccio-benzoni-by-taylor-corse-and-enrico-minardi/
