on violence
come, cut the branch that isn’t blazing with buds
cut the door handle, the spoke
of the wheel that doesn’t turn, cut
the road that doesn’t brush against distances
come, cut the wind coughing in the dark, light up
the whistling blood as it sets sail towards harm
what can happen will happen to you
in things that are close and hidden alike
and you won’t even know when, what
you won’t even fathom how far, only at
the counter of the radical bank
will you find out the exchange rate of fear
from VERSI DI ESPERIENZA ED AMNESIA 2004
tongue of stone
whether inside a cage or inside your head
or under gray desert sands
words may die
just like people
once the fabric containing them
becomes unraveled
once it is torn away
and then down they slide into a ravine
among atoms that shiver at the touch
nauseated matter withdraws and shatters
like chips of stone raining down
only the manner (plummeting)
up to your ears in foamy water
only the weight (its volume)
tongue of stone
rolling in your mouth
sucking on inarticulate
deportations at sea
only the thing itself, without inflection
euphemisms wandering among
sounds like snares
and us
we work and pray*
and speak into the night
beyond the cut of the cold canal
as though triangulating with the stars
a home that glows too intensely in memory
full of steps that lead to a waiting greenhouse
on your lips the vanishing point of the horizon
the teapot whistling its song amidst the rooftops
the skin of your hand with the scent
of a safe harbor
only backwards
but going back
is difficult
staying here
difficult
I’ll give you my time
my back my body I’ll give it
in exchange for a bag of food
but not my face, the expression of my eyes
my mouth
if you want to shoot, shoot up towards the sky
we are not
birds
2010
This poem was inspired by the impact of interviews with the migrant farmworkers who were wounded during the Rosarno uprising in January of 2010. The last stanza is a direct quote.
Gretel
if you keep quiet, Margherita, perhaps they won’t notice
that I have shut you inside my locker
together with old books papers from last year
creaky videos refresher course
binders, they won’t notice perhaps
that I don’t want to let you go, let you out of here
that I bring you water from the cooler
a sandwich wrapped in plastic
this locker could turn into your lair
anyway you’d be better off here than outside
poke your pinkie out of the locker door
if you still have flesh around the bone you can stay
you aren’t in danger of starving yet.
stay inside but keep quiet, your face
is too scary, in the middle your two eyes like Mount Etna
that dissect the hours, take roll call
of the most random of things, your mouth gnashes
at the blackboard, blacker than it and with more writing,
and when you move the curve of your chin
quashes messy questions
you are ill mannered and perhaps brought up ill inclined
you dance barefooted on the borders that sort of primitive
dance, you pound your feet and shake your hands
just like you really got burned
but if you keep quiet, Margheritina, they won’t notice
and I can keep you with me a little longer.
From SCUOLA D’OSSA (2011-2017)
references and responses
Simply pretend the earth is mute
mute like things when you avert your eyes away from them
I’ll ignore the stench of mud
produced by flesh howling in the nights of famished time
I try to erase the droplets of fog
drops from a chained body, drops of iron encysted in the bodies
They are erasing my memory
half extinguished fires outside of the door, the inadvertent sharing of wine glasses
I’ll have to bypass my memory
further down there, beyond the realm of possibility
On Judgment Day they’ll stand barefoot
while youth dies like spring, like songs, like the mouth of god
in the meantime, coups d’états, real and alleged, failed and staged, directed and ignored
Losing your soul will cost time
terrified, in an utterly unforeseen, incomprehensible way
what will I do with my love under the cooling logs of a smile
The part of the Earth that makes her to blush
what will my love do for me if slumber chances by like a miasma
and lips turn that otherworldly color of the desert
Photo: they replace you until you return
because there is a meaning even in the way a shadow fell on your cheekbone the day of the last fire glimpsed between peaceful leaves
A mix of your blood, your sweat, fluid leaking out of your eyes,
an extreme, black departure surrounding all certainties
in a cone of darkness, in the crook of history’s elbow.
Everything has its weight
if you go now it will be forever, it will be agony
it will be through frozen squares and you’ll have to drag
a restless, boneless survival around them
Fill exile’s belly with as much of your own blood as you can
if you go now you’ll cross shattered bridges
where the faint sounds echoing out of our throats
shall be forever trapped in glass
And a box- where one day your mother trapped your scream
there could be different routes, different gestures, other days of no surrender
clots of stem cells meant to turn into blood with other directions
in the scorching heat of this second millennium born of hate
The old door applauds the wind
loves to feel its spinal cord vibrate in the wood
identify as a welcoming threshold for whatever weather
a little lark-girl still granted admission to the garden
And the wind is an invisible being
still creaking, the door of sorrow opens and closes
ten thousand times it repeats your name together with the ones who were lost
human kind is also lost, what remains are the extreme rhythms of silence
Even as the dance with the trees
2017
The italic lines are from Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh, have been translated by me from the English version of his poems.
Almost as though water should derive from fire and earth from water,
and in this manner any element should always derive
from a preceding one of a different kind.
- (from an electrical power substation at Correggioverde, near Mantua)*
That a spark would fly, in such a fog, a humor almost thick as rain, was the last thing you’d expect,
in all that planking completely fallen into disuse, which at one time had rooms and stories, mutually
paraphrasing lives in transit. The wrong flare from a forgotten live wire, almost a fragment in a vacuum
with no invitation or swerving atom. So, all that glass swarmed down your eyelids that had not blinked for
days, a dry glue sticking to the bills piled up on the shoe rack in the entrance. Like when a crippled warrior
looks an the enemy in the eyes, and tars a moon around his eyes to maul the darkness.
Thirty-five years of age, four children (including the one who kept rowing with his oars in those rusty
outskirts until dusk crested), and penelope sitting watching the news, and one more round of lay-offs, one
among many, of these that mark the borders of our new, unperceived Copper Age.
*This poem was inspired by an incident that took place in 2016 in the village of Correggioverde, near Mantua, where a unemployed worker who was trying to eke out a living by collecting copper wire from abandoned buildings was electrocuted by a live wire in a decommissioned electrical power substation, on a foggy day.
from CARTOLINE METAFISICHE (2013-2017)
Video appearing in RepubblicaTV.
Born in Bologna in 1964, award winning poet and translator Maria Luisa Vezzali teaches literature at high school. She is the Italian translator of Adrianne Rich (Cartografie del silenzio, Crocetti 2000, and La guida del labirinto, 2011), and Lorand Gaspar (Conoscenza della luce, Donzelli 2006). She was also the editor for Saint-John Perse’s Anabasi.
She has published several poetry collections including L’altra eternità (1987), Eleusi marina (1992), dieci nell’uno (2004) lineamadre (2007), forme implicite. Her poems have been translated into English, Spanish, French, German, Swedish and arabic. Her poems appear in many journals and anthologies. She is an editor for the literary journal “Le voci della luna” and the translator’s collective WIT (Women in Translation).
The featured image is a painting by Lule (Barbara Gabriella Renzi).
