UNENDING SONG N. 1

water of the world
sizzling river bound for
smooth silence

music overheard overhead
despite our forgetfulness
and the forces of habit

never calls for a halt
aims at the blank of no ear
gushing from all our sushes and voices

fountain even barren
in the void
springing

UNENDING SONG N. 2

this throat
of cracked cane
won't convey afloat again
a flute's solo mute

this tongue
of inner drill, instead of speaking
only slowly keeps on pricking
a escape-proof pit

this mouth
of forgetful wings,
plunges in the dungeons of the wind
an echo which I can't retrieve

this speech
brewed out in bellows of clay
falls short of breathing
before having its say

NOTES BY A SHUT-UP

through my pores I outpour
a cement of my own,
outside a wall wells up
made of sound silence,
whilst inside the universe
fades into forgetfulness

to watch death from an outer stance
or time in an out-of-time glance
equates with sensing the aching body
apart from feeling the pain
which makes it the body I am

drop by drop the thread wears off
towards the exit from the inner water-spring
whose drinking brings
an increasing deadening
of our most treasured recalls,
and oblivion is someone talking
behind a double-glazed window

I don’t lose myself where I can’t be found,
I simply stay where I run out,
I’m unable not to want and won’t,
nails and hair may pull on and on,
as to the remains, they also still thrive
despite of me, what is left to be said:
all matter aspires simply to rest

ANTI-BIOGRAPHY

I can’t remember what I have just said
no problem
in all I speak nothing can grasp me

I don’t think there is someone else aside from me
nor do I feel inside me
someone of a kind who feels and thinks

I don’t halt where I am stopped
everything passes by I don’t keep in sight
please don’t count on my waiting

I go round around
what can’t be found
I can’t just stay or try my way

a shadow’s dream
or the dream’s shadow
other’s shadow dreams of me

I walk along the borders of bewilderment
I don’t remember where I mislaid my name
and unlearned each and every fear

ON TIME AND SPACE

1.

Funny the way time
seems to have a good time
going stuck.
Most often
when you were having most fun
doing nothing.

There should be no time spun
when there is not a thing to be done.
And stacks of spared time
in case you need them
precisely when
you were only looking.





2.

So gross the way space
seems to inflate
whenever you have a haste.
Or the style how distances
tend to stretch apart
if you are tired or just too far.

I don't go fussy about the impracticality
of building a time machine
(we travel in time just all the time:
see, these lines scratched on my skin
tell you exactly where I have been).
What we really need are manners to speeding.

ZDEUS, GIUPPITER IN GRECO

Anche se io fosse mai stato
Un fannullone ancora più sfacciato,
Non mi sarebbe mai capitato
Di aver concepito un simile reato:
Zdeus, Giuppiter in greco,
Era il nome del mostro di cui parlo,
E l’aveva da poco messo a punto
Un conosciuto a metà pazzo a metà lucido,
Che, al tornare a casa, visitavo
In un pomeriggio grigio nel grigio
Permanente di San Paolo.
Mi spiego - si trattava di un programma da computer
destinato a essere di utillizzo per chiunque
capitasse di volere comporre versi.
E attesto che, con un premere di bottone,
Ne sprizzava, ed in mucchi in effetti,
Come l’orgoglioso inventore
Ha insistito in quella stessa occasione
Con vera virtuose in fare dimostrazione:
Dammi un titolo, lui mi aveva detto,
E in due o tre minuti, oppure meno,
L’artefice poetaccio ne avrà tutto un testo
Con un unico tasto di ditto prodotto.
Di pure, pensi adesso ad un argomento!
Ed io in sfida ho sfortunatamente proposto:
Come ti pare ZDEUS, GIUPPITER IN GRECO?.
Ed ecco quassù verbatim riprodotti
I versi che ho visto con i propri occhi,
Ve lo giuro, in uno solo sputo,
Venire dal congegno stupido composti.

NON-SMOKING CAR

Hello, Stranger.
Do you perhaps smoke?
No? Oh, I was only hoping
you were also in for some danger.
Sure that I saw the sing and know
this is a non-smoking car,
then tobacco and similar
are totally disallowed.
But it is allowed to talk,
or don’t you talk to strangers?
I was only helplessly hoping
you were also in for dangers.

You hear some music.
Would it sound abusive
if I just sat to your drone?
Cause your headphones,
you know they hum,
one can’t help hearing them,
the same with the noise from the engine
or the announcer's voice saying some name.
Or if you prefer I sit here and also yodel,
would that for god’s sake get you upset?
I myself wouldn’t resent
if you patted on my elbow

to the beat of that song.
Let´s try this way: you twitter to me that track,
but in case you feel ashamed to do so,
you could just click your tongue
to the rhythm from the phones.
Or bring me from this train
and the broad choice of its bans
to hear you sing in some other place,
is it where you go?
I would not strongly oppose
to you inviting me home
by mistake or in the know.

Is this your life?
Is this our stopping-point
for this night?
Would you just bother
to introduce us both?
Did you study for your work
or is it just a sort of last resort,
a setback scheme?
Oh don’t tell me nothing is as simple as it seems.
Yes it is.
It’s just a question of picking the right question,
and being bold to hear whatever appears.

If I have a life of my own?
Oh, my! What you think me?
An automaton? A latex
full-size doll, fit for next sex?
Of course I am and am
what I may, you fill in the rest of the line.
What else, um, let me think how I put this,
I kind like kind guys,
this includes you, for sure,
and girls, I tried, you can bet,
but it is the differences that -offense,
make it different. Or less straining.

Did you per chance offer me something
to sip, but I went deaf and missed it?
Yes, I feel dry, parched and thirsty.
Most talking on my charge, no surprise.
Yes, I am over twenty, perhaps…
I’m not precisely
a lady, so you feel free to ask.
And some of my clothes too,
they’re in age for driving to school.
I’m broke, so the looks tries to look casual
or successfully pretend to. Cheers!
Is that your room?

You hadn’t anticipated me you were an expert.
Now I grew abashed. Your hands, Stranger,
they really got the knack.
I just made you a compliment,
you are supposed to grant
me your heartfelt thanks.
Oh, my pleasure! And I mean it verbatim.
You’re so shy, how can it be?
One can’t be like that these days,
not even if you were fifteen,
we are trained to put up an impregnable face,
right in the heyday of the age of vulnerability.

So you’re the satellite geek.
I were good with numbers and physics
right down in school, but it was never
definitely a calling. I’ve always known
I had to act, no choice was left me.
We lie all the time, shouldn’t be as difficult as it takes,
but when you know the art and have to lie your part,
then you come to understand it.
Truth becomes also commitment.
And to lie truthfully. Does that make sense?
Drop at the theater, I can fix you with a ticket,
once you swear you’re no amnesiac.

Is this the time to leave?
For I never know, is there a time to go?
There must probably be one,
even when you don’t feel like doing so.
I got this feeling that I’ll see you
or you see me, or most promisingly,
we will see us both.
And now let me kiss your cheek,
and wave goodbye.
Strangers were not supposed to meet.
Which way to the stairs?
Should I flip a switch?

IN ITINERE

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

ON TORTURE

I don’t know
what you want me to say,
but I will say it
just in case

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

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.

ORPHEUS

e non canto e non celebro che i topi
(Sergei Yessenin, trad. Angelo Branduardi)


the muddy day, brewing the weary clay,
clammed all eyelids with remorse
so none sees me anymore

if I shout, if I walk about in the nude,
if I wreak havoc on the civil truce,
it is useless, I’m my one and only witness

names, I ain’t got any (though none asks for it,
what feels the same) and to a fellow nobody
I cede my seat, unless he prefers my own feet

collecting beads from my dried song-spring
to scatter it into the wind is of little aid,
nobody listens or understands such things

following among the blind and the shadows
should secretly fill me up with all those things
I am as always the single one aware of

but such magnificent beauty misspent
in signs we cannot decipher
shut up for meaning just too much -

as the sea silences on the beach
or as bodies quiet down again
after love’s seeped through them

and all the offspring that springs from my tongue
grows up stronger,
steals my gasp and speech,

till they banquet
profusely
on my own leftovers

from now on I will sing only for the joy of rats and frogs,
I leave my words to those who won’t be saved from fire,
and reek and sweat like desire

I pick up my rests,
I’m both the dance of my shreds
and the dead dancer driven over the edge

the music which stood by me,
I looked back but could find but thin air,
yet still miss

another’s voice, another’s flair,
now can you believe this?
I have lately taken to talking to God

LIBRARY

these lined books
are the poor owners
of a sole anecdote
they can’t stop performing

they have hundreds of wings
but even if you tease them
they wouldn’t know how to get started
they are the desperate escape-artists
of a solo number
they can’t afford forgetting

the shelf doesn’t care
to have the eyes in the shadow
and not to manage to read their tales
it knows by hearsay
they don’t have that much to teach
but it likes to display them
as teeth in an arms race

it kind swallows them
every now and then
when a search
budges and rummages
to no result

trapped on their insides
the readers spell
random passwords
out of their shell

and silence is a voice in the head
hovering overhead
like an unremitting stream
leaking from the ceiling
to nobody else's annoyance

PONDERINGS ON A STATUE

deprived of an arm
the statue had its gesture
captured

without the legend in bronze
it had its speech
stolen

if they only could see us, its eyes would keep their quiet,
phantom in reverse that we all can see
but can’t see us in its turn

a second garment of moss
shelters it from the stone cold
which afflicts still nature

its heavy feet trot around time
time our eyes simply can't distinguish
for we can’t meet it from the outside

the statue must also suppose
nothing besides itself exists
and I’m afraid it has a point

one day they had organised
a loud inaugurating opening
but today you won't even hear about it

it seems bound to be less a memento
of the fortune of recollection than another
unwilling tribute to devouring oblivion

and when the night covers the world
and the dreams reweave the threads of the lived
the statue hides from our lights

and goes back to sleeping