LA STRAGE DI CARTAGINE

LA STRAGE DI CARTAGINE
 
 
Cartargine non fu distrutta
in un’unica spedizione
ci ocorrerono mesi, anni
uccisi i maschi
(perché non ne avessero altri)
le donne per abitudine violate
resi i bambini schiavi
 
Roma non fu costrutta
lungo uno solo giorno
(furono necessari
i cattivi strappati
dalle armi di conquista)
si figuri allora come ebbe stato costoso
realizzarsi un brutto sogno

THE STATE OF AFFAIRS

In a far-away medium-sized galaxy
on the outskirts of an insignificant star cluster,
an uncountable cloud of neutrinos
drifts with no apparent disturbance
through the rocky bulk of the third world.
It rushes its way onto Jupiter or Mars,
reminding there will always be
even between the tiniest bodies
solitudes that pull apart
to the squared speed of mind-boggling
astronomical figures.
A warm sun breeds the undergrowth below.
It’s Friday, if only we had a Sunday,
landscapes switch off in the opposite hemisphere,
if it were not for the perihelion,
we could expect for an eclipse also here.
Four among the so-called physical forces
having been discovered,
gravity, far the weakest, insists
on staying out of the broad picture,
faster than light, still acting from a distance,
trying to get things closer
but making them collapse
if they dare get too attached.
A bum’s been shot
but in a nearby district,
a remote country brags about
people getting killed on assembly line
(just in case you would mind).
Many others on different occasions
haven’t known any better;
city is a jungle; living entails sure risks;
and so you can bring up other samples
of ready-made wisdom which may keep you appeased
for a day or two, no more than this.
Really bewildering is the fact
that the fine (dis)adjust
of a couple of constants
could have produced
the twisted track we tread
compelled by some sort of evicted hope,
as a forlorn house that only longs for
having a door opened, being mailed,
hearing people talking,
but grows old alone till one day
finds itself finally replaced.
Yet there is always the possibility,
for the sake of sanity, of making up further lies,
with abuse of the premises or an excess
of good reasons, unless
they also disclaim us
only too fast.
And, at the close of play,
who knows if dim lucidity
won’t turn out to be
the unsuspected recipe
for picking up the pieces
and making the best of it.
But, in the meantime, you keep asleep:
weird creatures compose
the benthonic zoo of your dreams
– you and a dead friend have a chat,
later you come across with one of your lost sonnets (sic),
on other occasion you spend the whole night
trying to put on a shirt,
or then reading a book whose letters
crumble one by one to dust,
o no, no porn stuff, nothing
worth staying here. So, do you a favour
and wake up - a whole world waits for you
on the other side of you,
and there be sure to find the horizon’s flight,
the city and its thick knit of contacts,
the lustful confusion and the clearing midday sun,
a world (impossible and implausible as it is)
as you have ever known it,
a world just like
this.

MONOLOGUE OF THE MIRROR

Limos... Liquens... Opaco espelho cego!
(Cecília Meireles)


reflecting a world of things,
I only feign,
to be honest I can’t stop
being the same

I have no memory,
nor do I retain as a photo frame,
what passes my way
drops no shade and no stain

our common fate consists in breaking,
but, if we live to tell, our sight
slowly fades away, under cataracts,
till we go blind below our cracks

there are those that don’t hold their water,
as the ones that float on a lake skin,
similar to amphibious creatures
sometimes they stall, sometimes they spring

if the refrained are, according to the frame,
pieces from the Baroque or the Renaissance,
the watery best resemble
impressionist paintings

though there is often in both cases
the risk that, approaching too closely,
in a slip the subject trips
inside its object

love in reverse - the one we have in ourselves:
nobody really resists to catch a glimpse,
vanity ruins me, one day I’ll end up shattering,
just too eager to see more of mes

somehow or other, to love too much is our doom,
and yet, putting myself under someone else’s skin,
dull as I am, that’s what I still can most hardly do,
I’d much rather hang inside a closed room

and only home in
my own chin

CULTIVA SÓLO IDEAS PROPIAS, AUNQUE ABSURDAS

 

​Be your own lamp
​(Gautama)
 

Cultiva sólo ideas propias,
aunque absurdas.
No te enfades si no traigan
ningún residuo de verdad.
Olvida el sentido común y vete
por donde nadie vaya acompañarte.
 
Antes una soledad de estrella,
que resplandece de su lucero,
que ser reflejo de un brillo ajeno.
Aléjate de todo concepto,
por más acierto o bien intencionado,
que otro otrora ya haya pensado.
 
Nada debas a los hombres:
peor que deberles dinero
es alquilarles pensamientos –
luego te ves esclavo a su servicio,
exento de toda grandeza
y de todo delito.
 
No cantes gloria que no te pertenezca,
canta antes tus propios vicios.
Jonás no escapó al vientre de la ballena
rogando a Dios compasión o crédito,
sino por la virtud evasiva
de sus futuros méritos.
 
Si tienes o no razón, es otro cantar.
Osa pensar lo nuevo, nada imite,
ni deje al viejo que te parasite:
está dos veces muerto,
ya no vive solo,
vive sólo en ti.
 
Nada más te turbe,
ni lo poco,
ni lo mucho,
sólo te importe que sea tuyo.
Y con ello te baste
en llenar el mundo.

THE SUN ENVIES ME

My rags refract some brownish tints.
I’m not befriended with the blue, nor can I fly.
I belong in the earth which sticks to my skin.
The earth that some time shall cover me all over.

If one of these days I switch off,
I draw solace from the thought
that nobody I know of
will bother to notice.

Only the dew will grieve me,
discreetly, in the impatient dawn
which will be nowhere about
because I won’t be listening to it.

I am actually too minute
before such huge beauty in the world,
and all I possess of my own
are my tiny life and its fellow shadow.

When the skylight sets
its heavy load on my back,
I lug along as my sole burden
my unsteady steps.

The Sun envies my insignificance,
my dumbness and redundancies,
and with its steel
cruelly drills through my pupils.

The colours then begin
flowing slowly from
all beings
as in a requiem.

The Sun envies me.
As a god(dess)
or some species as stingy
the Sun envies my lot.

When the Sun turns off,
it won’t go once for all,
the Sun rests will still rest in peace
as all ashes and cosmic hiss.

But I, if I hit on extinction,
I shall vanish as a whole,
in flesh and in ghost,
in memory and oblivion.

The Sun won’t
even go close.

CONVALESCENCE

I see a crazy world 
zooming on past my ears
blurred is just good enough
after those where the fuck 
so many blank years

THE INDIVISIBLE MAN

an undivided man,
a man walking towards us,
warping
the morning corner

a man who am I,
who is everybody,
a man undivided
that I see on all nobodies

who sees greets us,
so many waves grip us,
another man doesn’t delay
fetching us onto his way

hugs huddle hugs,
our names fly away,
land on other lips
and lump when we split

a man slowly bringing in
his incomplete shaping,
a man stretching his limbs,
untying the morning laces

a man brushing off the wings
and tuning the steps in posses,
a man singing
as an alarm cock or a choir of voices

a man calling forth
the day we call tomorrow

THE SCROOGE

they expect me to collect
the afternoon’s broken crystal
and rejoin the pieces torn apart
calling for a false
fresh start

they advise me to look out for
the gold of a dawn we wore off
and abandoned beyond recall,
the copper steam of your skin
you returned in an ash urn

they tell to retrieve
a word overheard in reverie,
the tongue of thunder, the escape of the birds,
and nothing ever goes astray
remaining out of my domain

you ask me to spare a dream I cannot say,
and whose forgetfulness I never happen remember,
a shout of pain I scraped in mid-air
but which engraved in the naught
at least a wisp of my voice

a stalled watch, a burned match,
a love put out of order,
everything that fooled the fences of time
and looks back over us
from the other side of life and death

you beg me to save in the fortune of forged coins
we treasure in our recollection
all the things I didn’t have but long hoped for,
and all the things I never wished
but right now I realise I missed

you claim that I should clam to as much as I can,
but I cannot help possessing already the outright plenty
of all the things I have never gained and will never again,
and so, to the richness of this day, I can only add
whatever still rests to be left

RENONCEMENT

savoir perdre
c'est peut-être
savoir gagner
le pleure ou le sourire
du souvenir
d'un matin
vrai ou inventé

c'est, au contraire,
ou de plus,
peut-être,
enfin mériter
l'oubli d'une affaire
que je ne réussis plus
à vous raconter

c’est, qui sait,
permettre
à l'avenir de nous faire
le cadeau du chemin
imprévu
où il veut, malgré-nous,
nous amener

je ne sais pas renoncer, je ne veux pas savoir renoncer
là je suis immune à toute dose de fanatisme
et seul peut me consoler savoir que savoir perdre
c'est peut-être en fait renoncer
mais seul pour pouvoir en outre
et coûte que coûte
tout de même gagner

RUDENESS AS MY ONE SOCIAL SAVING GRACE

At a bar or the like, surrounded by a crowd
that glances and smiles at me,
as if its sole purpose in the world
was to benefit me with the pleasure
of keeping me company,
I feel awkwardly kind of obliged
to have an erection…

I suppose any badge-carrying shrink would think

of my case as an instance of perversion,
already described or to be baptised,

but I stick to considering it as a response
imposed by some sort of social-self-conditioning,
designed only to set me in
(I who am as desperately shy
as a catholic school grant child)
such a too social mode….

The same when I find myself at a table,

and the talking has broken down all around, 

so we just keep on seeping from our glasses,

as helpless as a leaking sink.
For such occasions I have learned by drill

a congenial array of jokes, purport

to be used as a last resort, but of that sort

that would drive a stevedore 

all blushed in the face.

And I swear I will hava them told
even to sophisticated elderly ladies

I had never met before.

The boundaries between
pleasure and social-appropriateness
have already engendered
many a treatise.
Bur how to explain
the strange acquaintance
of old-aged social graces
with ever-renewed rule-breaking?