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?
II
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/
