I walk between what were and will be my steps
I can't see who went past or who is ahead
the way is about all there is to see
but I couldn't say I am all the way
maybe just like anyone else just halfway through
and if I go my best yes maybe
and who knows how many steps in-between
still and already, and who knows how many of us passed
between who we are and no longer
maybe they all went lost or may be just all around us
and then how many of them between us and
who knows for sure and who only wonders
but down my one or other way
anyway I can go
I go the way
Thursday, December 23, 2010
DICTIONARY
leafing through you
I grow startled and speechless
at the unending richness of language
as startled and speechless as
those small mute things which
don’t have a name
I grow startled and speechless
at the unending richness of language
as startled and speechless as
those small mute things which
don’t have a name
IN THE DARK WOOD OF INTENTIONS
Io credo ch’ei credette ch’i credesse
che... (Dante)
I know you think that I only pretend not to imagine
that nobody has a clue that you only presume you don't know
that I believe that you suppose that I don’t ignore exactly
what I don’t think you even suspected I let you realise so.
What they can’t understand is that I
definitely don’t know precisely what
you can tell I only play not to know.
But well, who knows?
che... (Dante)
I know you think that I only pretend not to imagine
that nobody has a clue that you only presume you don't know
that I believe that you suppose that I don’t ignore exactly
what I don’t think you even suspected I let you realise so.
What they can’t understand is that I
definitely don’t know precisely what
you can tell I only play not to know.
But well, who knows?
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
how much how much would be such as
to be too much too much or maybe just as
much to count as much for them to bust us?
that’s where we’ve always been
- somewhere in between –
an inn in a dream, say, like sour cream
not as hot as hell, not as freakish as heaven
but something in between –
sorbet when you craved ice cream
how dare you flee from a night in gaol?
how dare you feed from a nightingale?
for I could be the king of juice
or the lord of ringtones in Beetlegeuse
and yet reckon myself as the drama-queen
in a dancing club packed with aces
were it not for this poker grin
laughing upside-down my face
I beg you to bring the thing we need
we’d fly so high our minds would go past
our eyes would soar past us so fast
till we disappear
I beg you to give us all the power we greed asap,
I beg you to give’em all the powder to the soviets
maybe it’s high time we go
we’d be better off if we CEO
maybe it’s high time we blow
we’d be already off if UFO
if we tiptoe and I lose the rope
will you still be in the near?
if we topple and I loosen the hope
is it our voiceovers we will overhear?
at last, as the threads snap
a yell, a patrol bell, an alarm spell
our fears freezing
what the hell are we doing here?
the wellspring of a siren sing
a telltaling thing, unreal thing
what the hell we hear?
our own screams
repealing
at Bell’s theorem
to be too much too much or maybe just as
much to count as much for them to bust us?
that’s where we’ve always been
- somewhere in between –
an inn in a dream, say, like sour cream
not as hot as hell, not as freakish as heaven
but something in between –
sorbet when you craved ice cream
how dare you flee from a night in gaol?
how dare you feed from a nightingale?
for I could be the king of juice
or the lord of ringtones in Beetlegeuse
and yet reckon myself as the drama-queen
in a dancing club packed with aces
were it not for this poker grin
laughing upside-down my face
I beg you to bring the thing we need
we’d fly so high our minds would go past
our eyes would soar past us so fast
till we disappear
I beg you to give us all the power we greed asap,
I beg you to give’em all the powder to the soviets
maybe it’s high time we go
we’d be better off if we CEO
maybe it’s high time we blow
we’d be already off if UFO
if we tiptoe and I lose the rope
will you still be in the near?
if we topple and I loosen the hope
is it our voiceovers we will overhear?
at last, as the threads snap
a yell, a patrol bell, an alarm spell
our fears freezing
what the hell are we doing here?
the wellspring of a siren sing
a telltaling thing, unreal thing
what the hell we hear?
our own screams
repealing
at Bell’s theorem
REASON AND FAITH
Believers reproach me for not going along with faith.
Seculars harass me with good reasons not to believe.
But I don’t think reason and faith are as estranged as night and day.
I don’t place my faith in reason,
nor do I search for reason in faith,
quite on the opposite.
I don’t believe in those who feign to believe only out of worship -
whoever says to act in faith
has only hopefully in good faith decided to decide any later.
I don’t see either how brainstrain could make a good replacement
[ for creed
When the hour comes, it is not reason but decision
that leads your head towards the net.
This is, I hope, my belief:
that I will be in good reason
once I have a reason to believe it.
Seculars harass me with good reasons not to believe.
But I don’t think reason and faith are as estranged as night and day.
I don’t place my faith in reason,
nor do I search for reason in faith,
quite on the opposite.
I don’t believe in those who feign to believe only out of worship -
whoever says to act in faith
has only hopefully in good faith decided to decide any later.
I don’t see either how brainstrain could make a good replacement
[ for creed
When the hour comes, it is not reason but decision
that leads your head towards the net.
This is, I hope, my belief:
that I will be in good reason
once I have a reason to believe it.
INSTRUCTION MANUAL
A) If your friends start to get you bored,
don’t leave them speaking to themselves.
Serve more wine, so that each of your silences
shut up one another. Don’t call for solitude:
loneliness is like the moon,
it’s got no image and no soul of its own.
If it drops a milky fog, it’s neither semen nor bloom,
it’s the sun’s stolen warmth that’s become
almost a gloom.
B) If you lose your way, don’t try to bring it back.
Absence doesn’t render the distances or moves them.
On your returning, the street won’t bump
into a younger you.
The stars that guide our fates
will keep on flickering indifferently
on the bottom of a mossy pool.
C) If you feel homesick, don’t think of your hearth.
You won't find in it more fire than you had already robbed.
It will rest forever on the same spot,
eternal, unattainable.
And the memories that it still brews
you brought them all
long ago with you.
D) If you feel like, don’t ask.
Try to pick out another desire
to add to the last or get it suppressed.
No point in hiding from them,
as the shadow that flees the light
unaware it stems from its fright.
The same way water and fire
have legs, and the earth’s got scents,
a soul is full-blooded desire.
E) If your yearnings are just not enough,
then provide that they are spared.
More awful than getting lost by them
is thinking you could get loose one day.
To lose desire equals as a symptom
of ageing with shedding hair.
Then let them just wear out on their own,
unveiling how strongly they preserve us
or swerve us.
F) If they contend, don’t solve it right away.
Why should you worry beforehand?
Care only by the time to select them.
Though life is made up of choices,
each choice chooses its hour,
what may delay, but never comes in too late.
G) If you see a door, don’t open it.
The greeting word and the smiling fit
often leave in the mouth a vacant split.
They simply traverse it
as a doorstep bound to an outdoor street.
Every door slit hints to another side,
but gets us as always knitted
to the same old street.
H) If light sheds all about, now don’t disclose your eyes.
Don’t expect that things will move just to get you saluted.
(Except in case the drinking binge
has rimmed you far off the edge-
and, this being the situation, first place,
sit on the sill and keep there still,
or even before that, if it can’t be waited).
I) If you encounter a letter, don’t read it.
They never lie the lies we needed to listen.
We are all full of shortages,
we just don’t always know what their source is.
Feelings never land on speech,
if per chance they feed on it,
it ends up scarcely sufficient
to put them appeased.
J) If you don’t manage to rest, relax.
Drink from the news or harvest from work,
there is value (though not too often)
even to those things we do the most.
K) If the hour moves forward,
grieve for the expiring moment
as briefly as you should. If we reckon time,
it is because we have of it a reckoned input.
But the day that left us behind
has not truly gone missing.
If it did get lost, then it was certainly because
we weren’t keeping a close eye on it.
L) Don’t waste
the remains of the day
on planning
the day.
M) Instead, if sleep yawns,
don’t postpone it,
though it seems no point.
N) After all of this,
don’t only dream,
go be it.
don’t leave them speaking to themselves.
Serve more wine, so that each of your silences
shut up one another. Don’t call for solitude:
loneliness is like the moon,
it’s got no image and no soul of its own.
If it drops a milky fog, it’s neither semen nor bloom,
it’s the sun’s stolen warmth that’s become
almost a gloom.
B) If you lose your way, don’t try to bring it back.
Absence doesn’t render the distances or moves them.
On your returning, the street won’t bump
into a younger you.
The stars that guide our fates
will keep on flickering indifferently
on the bottom of a mossy pool.
C) If you feel homesick, don’t think of your hearth.
You won't find in it more fire than you had already robbed.
It will rest forever on the same spot,
eternal, unattainable.
And the memories that it still brews
you brought them all
long ago with you.
D) If you feel like, don’t ask.
Try to pick out another desire
to add to the last or get it suppressed.
No point in hiding from them,
as the shadow that flees the light
unaware it stems from its fright.
The same way water and fire
have legs, and the earth’s got scents,
a soul is full-blooded desire.
E) If your yearnings are just not enough,
then provide that they are spared.
More awful than getting lost by them
is thinking you could get loose one day.
To lose desire equals as a symptom
of ageing with shedding hair.
Then let them just wear out on their own,
unveiling how strongly they preserve us
or swerve us.
F) If they contend, don’t solve it right away.
Why should you worry beforehand?
Care only by the time to select them.
Though life is made up of choices,
each choice chooses its hour,
what may delay, but never comes in too late.
G) If you see a door, don’t open it.
The greeting word and the smiling fit
often leave in the mouth a vacant split.
They simply traverse it
as a doorstep bound to an outdoor street.
Every door slit hints to another side,
but gets us as always knitted
to the same old street.
H) If light sheds all about, now don’t disclose your eyes.
Don’t expect that things will move just to get you saluted.
(Except in case the drinking binge
has rimmed you far off the edge-
and, this being the situation, first place,
sit on the sill and keep there still,
or even before that, if it can’t be waited).
I) If you encounter a letter, don’t read it.
They never lie the lies we needed to listen.
We are all full of shortages,
we just don’t always know what their source is.
Feelings never land on speech,
if per chance they feed on it,
it ends up scarcely sufficient
to put them appeased.
J) If you don’t manage to rest, relax.
Drink from the news or harvest from work,
there is value (though not too often)
even to those things we do the most.
K) If the hour moves forward,
grieve for the expiring moment
as briefly as you should. If we reckon time,
it is because we have of it a reckoned input.
But the day that left us behind
has not truly gone missing.
If it did get lost, then it was certainly because
we weren’t keeping a close eye on it.
L) Don’t waste
the remains of the day
on planning
the day.
M) Instead, if sleep yawns,
don’t postpone it,
though it seems no point.
N) After all of this,
don’t only dream,
go be it.
ARTIFACTS
the fluorescent light
rubs against the Formica
standing stiff on a table
a saltshaker often lingers
with greasy fingers
many a shoe
has trampled on this rug
and so it wriggles
fade and parched
as a vase begging for water
when the doors shut up their trap
the couch will stretch out with deaf years
in front of a TV set,
chatterbox intent on
speaking by itself
in the meantime chairs
sit in clusters, staring at each other,
then turn their backs in a fit of temper,
concentrating on their own emptiness
the hunger provides
that the plates keep busy,
knives and forks scramble
whilst napkins take pains
to assemble the remains
a cigarette calls for a coffee that calls for a cigarette,
matches forget
their winglets in the air
in the looking glass the bathroom
skims its face,
puts itself together,
taps relieve their needs,
and vents scatter around the tracks
of those back in business
in the light which escapes
through a window pane
flocks of bills fly away
in their usual patterns:
money
money
money
rubs against the Formica
standing stiff on a table
a saltshaker often lingers
with greasy fingers
many a shoe
has trampled on this rug
and so it wriggles
fade and parched
as a vase begging for water
when the doors shut up their trap
the couch will stretch out with deaf years
in front of a TV set,
chatterbox intent on
speaking by itself
in the meantime chairs
sit in clusters, staring at each other,
then turn their backs in a fit of temper,
concentrating on their own emptiness
the hunger provides
that the plates keep busy,
knives and forks scramble
whilst napkins take pains
to assemble the remains
a cigarette calls for a coffee that calls for a cigarette,
matches forget
their winglets in the air
in the looking glass the bathroom
skims its face,
puts itself together,
taps relieve their needs,
and vents scatter around the tracks
of those back in business
in the light which escapes
through a window pane
flocks of bills fly away
in their usual patterns:
money
money
money
A TOUCH OF NOTHING
anyone who strains to see nothing
and succeeds, has not seen any of it,
for nothingness isn’t anything
that in principle could be felt or unfelt,
and, if it did, I bet it would immediately
strike whoever did blind and deaf and dumb
for as long as he would sense it,
so that, in the end,
he would sense just nothing at all
and yet, how strange, it does affect us somehow,
and no sooner you think of it, you feel its grip
then and there, a kind of chilling drift of air,
climbing through your legs and ruffling
the leftovers of your hair,
but air, though thin (like your legs),
is also something as any other thing,
bound to be perceived or not,
but even when not, it is not simply nothing
stranger a thing than nothing is sheer beingness,
so trivial and inaccessible at once you can hardly define it,
though you hold it all the time,
of course nothing is simpler than simple being,
and say nothing about all those still stranger things
that lie between being and being nothing,
as you and me and all the things
that simply are without meaning
to be or not to be no thing
and succeeds, has not seen any of it,
for nothingness isn’t anything
that in principle could be felt or unfelt,
and, if it did, I bet it would immediately
strike whoever did blind and deaf and dumb
for as long as he would sense it,
so that, in the end,
he would sense just nothing at all
and yet, how strange, it does affect us somehow,
and no sooner you think of it, you feel its grip
then and there, a kind of chilling drift of air,
climbing through your legs and ruffling
the leftovers of your hair,
but air, though thin (like your legs),
is also something as any other thing,
bound to be perceived or not,
but even when not, it is not simply nothing
stranger a thing than nothing is sheer beingness,
so trivial and inaccessible at once you can hardly define it,
though you hold it all the time,
of course nothing is simpler than simple being,
and say nothing about all those still stranger things
that lie between being and being nothing,
as you and me and all the things
that simply are without meaning
to be or not to be no thing
SAY A BLESSING
god bless my next-door neighboring artistes
who fixed me up with tickets to the Warhol's exhibit
god bless the rainy day
that swept visitors and traffic fines away
god bless private initiatives (entrepreneurship?)
and all I.R.S. incentives (chiefly for bluechips)
god bless those who cultivate the self-embellishing virtues
but above all of us the sky blue and the rules
god bless the outspreading smoking prohibition
and my new nicochewinggum addiction
god bless brothers guts, grits and wits
though a dose more spirits can also fit
god bless the repentant streetcar driver
who accidentally ran over Gaudí
god bless my dysfunctional parents
but also the Sacred Family
god bless (oh, don’t forget) brain damages
and, thanks to them, the neurosciences' advances
god bless those who pray and get
and those who needed but forgot to ask
god bless our world ruled by blind Chance
who debunked old venal Providence
god bless as well all that is deceased
and made room for what now exists
god bless God Himself
and all this mess He has amassed
and god bless who the hell blesses me
but my clammy handkerchief equally
who fixed me up with tickets to the Warhol's exhibit
god bless the rainy day
that swept visitors and traffic fines away
god bless private initiatives (entrepreneurship?)
and all I.R.S. incentives (chiefly for bluechips)
god bless those who cultivate the self-embellishing virtues
but above all of us the sky blue and the rules
god bless the outspreading smoking prohibition
and my new nicochewinggum addiction
god bless brothers guts, grits and wits
though a dose more spirits can also fit
god bless the repentant streetcar driver
who accidentally ran over Gaudí
god bless my dysfunctional parents
but also the Sacred Family
god bless (oh, don’t forget) brain damages
and, thanks to them, the neurosciences' advances
god bless those who pray and get
and those who needed but forgot to ask
god bless our world ruled by blind Chance
who debunked old venal Providence
god bless as well all that is deceased
and made room for what now exists
god bless God Himself
and all this mess He has amassed
and god bless who the hell blesses me
but my clammy handkerchief equally
A LITTLE SUN
When I was let in the hospital,
they informed me of a floor,
three flights of stairs,
two turnings left
and a room number.
In the dark loneliness
that commands a corridor
demanded by steps of stumbling strangers,
the ill, who are not allowed to depart,
find out that they are bound
to a body,
their deaths’ cage,
and watch their visitors from the inside,
with their heedless
eyes of glass.
I trod trudgingly through narrow passageways,
which clumped my steps with other walks of people
who pensively plod, and, as I opened the aimed door,
the wake of darkness from the confined shadows
still slurred my wobbling sight.
It was then that through the window
outpoured the morning,
nimble of light,
and, after recovering from the sun’s stroke,
I saw you, girded in gold, blithely asleep.
I gasped – happiness you only possess
in your unknowing,
and time is the hatchet man of the inert,
as we force our ways down a route
cramped and confused like a locked room.
And the little of sun we ever know only visits us
in discreet doses over a whole lifetime,
though it seems so dense
that we sense it as if it had always seized us
simply seamlessly.
they informed me of a floor,
three flights of stairs,
two turnings left
and a room number.
In the dark loneliness
that commands a corridor
demanded by steps of stumbling strangers,
the ill, who are not allowed to depart,
find out that they are bound
to a body,
their deaths’ cage,
and watch their visitors from the inside,
with their heedless
eyes of glass.
I trod trudgingly through narrow passageways,
which clumped my steps with other walks of people
who pensively plod, and, as I opened the aimed door,
the wake of darkness from the confined shadows
still slurred my wobbling sight.
It was then that through the window
outpoured the morning,
nimble of light,
and, after recovering from the sun’s stroke,
I saw you, girded in gold, blithely asleep.
I gasped – happiness you only possess
in your unknowing,
and time is the hatchet man of the inert,
as we force our ways down a route
cramped and confused like a locked room.
And the little of sun we ever know only visits us
in discreet doses over a whole lifetime,
though it seems so dense
that we sense it as if it had always seized us
simply seamlessly.
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