INTRODUCTION BY THE BEGGAR KING

King is how they call me, though of a King
I don't really wear nor the bling not the grin.
I could be called instead
a springing fountain
or a Zen beggar,
leaving very much unchanged
the way the world spins.

Words don't stick nor bear resemblance
to the things they name
simply by blind chance.
But if I had to decide on the pertinence
of things to their names,
I would command, for instance,
the rain to be called happiness:

I wonder if it wouldn't fall less unruly
if only we made it wear a longer dress.
And the same if we renamed sadness
and called it smile, I can already fancy
that at the first glance at our clumsy faces
all sadness would be erased
by putting a laugh onto its face.

Yet, to be called King of anything,
even of the bums or the dumb,
is no small thing.
Frankly, it doesn't flatter me,
for I couldn't care less
if in the crowd I blunder about
as the prince or the beggar.

However, if you called me a fountain,
you wouldn't be completely mistaken,
because placed where I always lay down my head,
in the middle of a square,
I'm a fountain,
but one that spurts
words instead of water.

And if a beggar is not the whole,
it is in the least
a part of what I am,
since I have no roof of my own,
and so the number of walls
that give me shelter equals
the rims on the roads I roam.

Beggar or fountain
are common names,
they refer to classes,
not to individuals.
In the end, this is how I prefer to think of myself:
non-specific,
plural.

In an universe so full of beings,
proper names and numerous offspring
are just not feasible.
We are like sand, packed to such an extent,
that none can make out any longer
the shouts of the drowned amongst
an ocean awash with siren songs.

A tramp is, in brief, someone that seems
very much like anyone else, except that he kept
from turning into another thing
in a world of things,
things that used to be autonomous beings
as we dream we keep on being,
but by which we ended up enslaved.

And the path I walk on
is my sole’s mate
and shifting traveling companion.
We have both the aroma
of the warm moist earth.
And, like his, my destination
lies at a crossroads.

This little one, which strides by my side
sniffing the morning light,
is Diogenes, the dog.
I dubbed him so, tongue-in-cheek, but also
because he is by nature a dog,
not solely as a term of abuse
or a figure of usage,

and hence the name fits him by birthright
of one whose all occupation consists
in strolling all about.
In addition, I benefit only
from the company
of a backpack and a doorstep,
and those are all my so-called belongings.

But the stick I pick
up from the ground
and carry around as a stick
builds onto me,
for the better weather or the worse,
all that chatter from the birds
buzzing on the trees.

I DON'T DISMISS THE COMPANY OF WHOEVER

Populus me sibilat, at mihi laudo.
(Horatio)


I mentioned I usually walk all by myself.
But I am more of a loner than a hermit
and never really dismiss the company
of whoever tries to keep pace with me.
Even those who look down on my habits.

Whatever they bear on their minds or tongues
is thin air, how could it weigh on me like a burden?
They talk so many words that I wonder
if there are so many things out there
just enough to fit under.

Hence, it is no cause for concern
if they can err in what they utter.
The world is far too crowded, we better not still add
to the number of beings that there are already,
and leave all that job to God and good looking glasses.
Yet I confess – I am fond of men.
Humours, tics, burning cigarettes.
I particularly cherish women and children,
though, if I had known, I would have stoned
who damn invented them in a binge of boredom.

And when the kids or the booing chase me down,
when I am spat upon by the dignified champions
of work-morale and public duties,
I take on their hints as a compliment.
Because I can still laugh even when it's just not the case.

Then, if I burst out laughing for no apparent reason,
I don't mean to tease who happens to be listening.
Remember– I am only the fool laughing at reason.

I DON'T HAVE A FACE OR A NAME

È come se una nube
arrivasse ad avere
forma di nube.
(Valerio Magrelli)


I don’t have a face or a name.
Don’t expect me to churn out
from my pocket a greeting card
after delivering the same speech
in the middle of an empty street.

I don’t deserve the constancy of a faithful name.
To be perfectly honest, I never bothered to be the same.
Though I seem to keep
running after my tail,
I never keep us on the same trail.

I’m not the grown-up from my own child,
nor am I the guy I left behind ten minutes ago.
The very same time which creases my features
and bends my shoulders
builds me up once more.

I am my son and heir, shaped
out of nothingness after my sheer unlikeness.
The same naught that gives me stuff and meaning,
for I realise that I just keep on living
as long as I serve as fodder to oblivion.

But they think me as a point to pin down
on the Cartesian ground,
and ask for my credentials
from the union of clowns.
I who am only where I ain’t or where I still can’t:

as that ship which can’t be seen from ashore,
but drifts onto us wrapped by the distance,
a rough bulk deprived of form,
it is, so as to say, a mountain of mist,
but a thing, no, it still isn’t;

or as love before love,
betrayed in a whim or shiver of hand,
squeezed between conventions and machinisms,
but, once enquired, you promptly deny it,
because love, no, it can’t still be it.

No word could fit me, since, as those of my kin,
I am solely made of flesh and bone,
and have never known
anyone composed of sterner stuff,
of ideals and high-flown goals.

Names
we can only deserve when
we grow mute so as not to need them,
as soon as we are finally through
with all the things we're long overdue.

DON'T YOU AIM AT THE STONES

Don’t you aim at the stones,
for they don’t know what they fly for.
Behave on fair terms with earth
and all of its freakiest creatures

that you in one of your future
lives may already have the fortune
to proudly have been before.
Don’t make complaints about the plants,

don’t demand amends on how you treat
or go treated by the beasts.
They have no clue as to
wether they bother or better you.

Your expectations have no room outside you,
and nature is,
in your exact similarity,
neither vicious nor virtuous.

Nonetheless, if on a hot day, the whole sun
starts to weigh down on your back,
go fetch under a tree’s hat
a grassy rest.

And feel how cozy in this hug
you find no cause to grudge.
Then lie there for a brief
lap sleep.

WHEN I FEEL TIRED

When I go exhausted and it feels like I only plod along pointlessly,
when the road furrows my feet
and I begin to find flaws with
whatever happens to surround me,
I close my eyes and conceive imaginary realms,
though more real than the life we people lead,
weaved in phantasmagoria.

In such worlds I crash from my own party a meal all of mine,
I serve my own water and pour out my own wine.
And the feast lasts as long as I can last,
for the usher rings the bell whenever I tell
and only hushes it when I can't tell any longer.
I don’t miss other resources or guests,
a dog and a moon are as good as it gets.

Then I open my eyes and understand
that all I dream about, regardless of pretense, I own already,
and I don't long for another life or deny the longings
that amount to make this one up, I simply believe I can get
them all resolved without resort to anything heavier than thought.
And they know how to wait patiently
for the moment of their invention or discovery.

Fed on my elusive banquet,
I don’t blame chance but bless it minutely.
Through all the odds and ends of impossibility,
I pray with all my lack of faith for it to stay
with me all along, for without it
the world just doesn’t know
which way it should go.

Thus, no source and no thirst,
neither hunger nor abundance
shall lead me astray,
come what may.
Flinch, I sure can,
just not today.

A TELESCOPE

Who said I feel resentment towards the selfish?
Nor do I despise the pristine or late-anti-liberals.
I am not even taken aback by the morally handicapped.
As all the afore-mentioned,
I also sustain that there is no fact of matter
to constrain us to be righteous or too goody.

If I were the invisible guy (as I am on closer inspection),
I would not refrain from kissing the florist’s lips,
substantial as a rich dish.
I would also collect myself from the church box
the amount of my own due alms
(well, it is more fun done than said).

I concede that it is only strictly reasonable
to do or not to do
what we are previously agreed on.
We are all free
and for atavism solely carry along
the so-called social gene.

That is why I dream about a city exclusive for them.
I suggest that they should leave us behind
and go found with their vast talents and resources
a country all for their relish and profit,
on an unreachable mountain range or far-off island
in safe distance so as to keep our peace guaranteed.

It would be exhilarating to probe through a telescope
how they would come out
living together.
I guess it would make stuff for a broad gamut
of gags their joint capacity
to conjure up disaster.

I don’t intend to make out of them
an object of lecture.
It is only too natural
that they aim at their intents,
why should they be prevented?
Just don’t count on me as a target.

I simply regret
that as long as they don’t take their leave,
that land of theirs
turns out to be precisely this.
It’s the old saying about the rotten apple
that ruins the whole basket.

Therefore, don’t reproach me,
all too dignified members
of our good-scented and manicured
time-honoured society.
Don’t feel annoyed if my fashion-unconsciousness appear
to intrude upon your taste and your penchant for the superior.

Because if I reek to the disgrace of all social-graces
(and much worse than my remaining teeth),
and am too far from handsome
(to the point mirrors look abashed at me),
I only repeat with my poor means
your great looks and your grand manners.

IF YOUR FRIENDS ASK YOU ABOUT THEIR FAILINGS

Make up at your friends’ request
minor defects in case they ask.
Such that any good man
should smile at compassionately.

Never censure
an act whose practice
did not belong to you,
even those that nagged you.

Our circumstances, we alone know them,
and even that is no big deal after all,
as a tree never knows for certain
where all of its fruits may fall.

And thus, each of us
only by herself can deserve
punishment
or solace.

ON NOTHING

Tãchons d’entrer dans la mort les yeux ouverts...
(Marguerite Yourcenar)


I am not like most guys, who feel stalked
but pretend not to notice.
I understand I can do nothing without nothing,
which leads my way and waits
for me at the end of my days.

Likewise, I would go lost without the hours,
which confer to the space routines.
The hours also march to their last, and drag me with them.
If I fail to keep up, then he slows down his pace:
he is a courteous old gentleman, quite fond of waiting.

In sum, I know that the small shadow
that was born with me,
feeds on my body
and goes on growing relentlessly,
till one day it will clog me head to toe.

Nevertheless, it is good policy to spare an escape route up-sleeve.
Not to attach to life is the preserve of the sick.
Even if I miss any new tricks,
I still believe I won't see anything coming
as long as if I keep the eyes wide open.

During the period we dwell under his wings,
all lack of care can only elicit an early visit.
There are no such things as accidents.
Accidents only confirm the blunder of retirement statistics
and add to the bulky profits of insurance companies.

When I sneeze without enough reasons,
when a psychotic-looking hasty commuter hits on my devious ways,
or when I, following a cloud, step on the zebra stripe
without looking both sides,
I know he is somewhere around.

I know he spies on me
from the blind side of normalcy,
drawing closer and closer
until nothing is all that you
can hardly notice.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

when I say babe your eyes
impersonate the very beauty,
I don’t mean your two or more legs
are not just as bewildering

when I shout out come over here o boy,
I call that brat approaching on a hobbyhorse,
not his brother who skipped class the day before
and stayed home today grounded for his joy

when I mention I feel the utmost pleasure
every occasion I hear you singing,
I hereby don’t waive other merriments
that may drive me equally content

so it goes: every time we say anything,
we have to keep quiet at the same time
the sum of all the other beings
a single word summons in

and, at the end of the day,
who knows how many silences
we put to say
just what we mean?

AMOR FATI, MA NON TROPPO

1.

I refute those who don’t think
and those who think I’m a thinker.
I never sought for truth.
But, if you are fond of lies,
I can spin off more than a tale.
So I leave you to your philosophy.
Just call me back, then,
as soon as you are finished.

I have never inquired after directions.
If there really were such things
my feet would always consult me
on the way they should go.
Nor am I driven to the gleam of gold:
no money pays for my share in time.
To have mine and throw it away
is good enough to make my day.

And I sing and dance as any severe worshipper of wine.
But I don’t celebrate what I got or will attain.
I’ve long given up any pretension or pretence of perfection.
So don’t imagine that I'll take part in the guys’ quest
for things which needed mending.
All wrong and pain are the by-product of men
or else exist only before our unclear conscience.
I can go delirious more seriously.

Don’t ask me either
if we are flesh besides fire.
One life is much
too much already.
If there is another death after that,
it is not likely.
But who knows for certain
other than the dead?

I guess I’ll be happy
to make their pleasurable acquaintance on due occasion.
But if it happens that nothing else happens,
why should I worry in anticipation?
For the time being, I feel fully satisfied
with this plain though transient certainty
that at least for the time being
I’m still very much alive and kicking.



2.

I admit that my anti-philosophy is also a philosophy.
It is just of a kind that won’t have us attached
to the orderly bundle
but would rather let us hang freely.
Since there mustn’t be other reasons to the world
than those it doesn’t care to tell us already,
I insist we should give it the final word.
Our idols are all very fine
but they won’t outstay us.

I don’t mean we should take our fate at face value.
For those, like me, that unfortunately nestle
much beneath the food chain’s safety level,
and who only for tastelessness or distraction
haven’t been so far devoured,
beyond any controversy,
life stinks.
And no poet or thinker might adjust or reengineer
our innate skill just not to fit.

But I also misled myself by seeking
too deep for grounds,
until one day I got myself buried
in foolproof doubts.
Later, when my remains were returned,
my recyclers found me not just the same
but also as dissimilar as before.
My essence has become that of the mirrors:
it is all of them or none at all.

And the world as a split glass repeats me.
Like a shattered Dionysus, my shards
walk for me and scatter our voices all over.
Those echoes are the brood
I was not able to make for myself.
They are my providence that chance
will not fail us. I sing only as a means to assure
that miracles, if they deign to ensue,
might ultimately favour us.

But I won’t grieve for my late substance.
Everything changes or may get changed.
I imagine it must be really great
to wake up every day having our old lady by one side,
but it sounds even greater only to realise
that each new day may bless us, god Grant,
with a surprise!
Best gait to take is wandering around
without any fixed ideas or steady grounds.

I live in all the things that once assaulted me in my wanderings
and since never again wished to go all by themselves.
As a matter of fact, I’m so small and vacant,
that I barely exist on my own.
But a city multiplies me.
All the roads in the city cross in my feet.
A city leads me
much beyond my loneliness.
With me a city makes love.

A city: myriads of stances that coalesce into unity,
like those small colourful bits
that juxtaposed in a certain arrangement
compose the bittersweet mosaic
of all what there is.
A city gathers me together.
I find and lose myself. I am every man.
Because there must be a love even bigger than the city:
the love that makes us want it ever bigger and bigger.

I HATE WHAT IS RECALLED

μισῶ μνήμονα συμπóτην


Dump the remains of my past
on the underneath layer of time’s embers.
What has become of them? Don't ask
- I hate the one who remembers.

The street horns hail my child’s wail:
I have been born only recently.
And if by chance I meet an acquaintance,
it seems I got a seizure of déjà-vu.

Joys, I had plenty.
Aches, better not to mention them.
Both I have abandoned entangled,
consigned to the same grave.

Don’t request references.
I don’t hold advice, no offence.
I have no science and no experience:
I just let the way keep up the pace.

I want to let go, move from, feel free
I don’t know how or when or what for.
I want to go, to become, not to be.
I have no hereafter and no before.

THE GYPSY SONG OR ON FREE WILL

One afternoon a gypsy,
who long stalked on me,
tugged on my shirt,
asking if she could treat me with a read.

I replied in bold terms
that given the contingent event
that future could be told beforehand,
there was no point in my responding

whether in the end I would accept or rebut
a proposal whose result she claimed to own
however to me altogether unbeknown.
Without flinching, she said I couldn't possibly resist it.

I burst in laugh, repealing never and never
had I felt tempted at tampering with a business that
was of sole concern for a flock of planets.
In sum, she had been unfortunate in her fortunetelling,

so could she please release my sleeve and clear the way?
I saw then her recoiling in a clangor
of glaring veils and false gold,
only wondering what had gone wrong...

Yes, I lied to her, though it is late for self-serving repentance.
She had claimed that in all seamless fabric of time-space,
nothing could ever happen to her ignorance.
And I, a pedestrian Faust, would have gone in grace

if she had unveiled me a glance of what’s in stock,
were it fact, were it fraud.
But, on second thoughts,
I would lie time and again,

for, if I had consented, in the end,
I would have lost not only the argument,
but also, addition to my temper, the will
to believe in a free will.

ON FREEDOM

That window roasted spinning chicken
at which we stare with watery mouths,
my dog and me, must think of itself
as being freer as compared with
his peer specimens. I guess it surely
considers it noble to fly orderly
in the usual anticlockwise direction,
spared from the wind’s whim
and the migratory lure of nurture.

So they say I could only benefit from revamped liberty,
if only I opted for a style of living which provided me
with wider informed choice and selection.
Gibberish: the most relevant resolutions come ready-made,
I am not the author of whatever I amount to be,
nor is anybody I know or ever heard of.
I could have been born a workaholic,
becoming good for even more nothing,
without none having ever experienced the urge to decide
when or how well I should kill my time.

But I am the first to grant myself all the trite curious
petty treats to whose election one is entitled
and I am the very first to defend them against
your naturally too good concerned intrusion.
For instance, I would never change my prerogative
to sleep each night anywhere I feel like
for the fade discretion to pick out once in a year,
having coffee with Joe, the dealer,
a brand new car to drive
(as though I had no feet of my own,
able to drive me when I don't feel tired
in order to wish I also got tyres...).
Similarly, why should I resign
to waking up and choosing among some pieces
the cloths I will put on,
when I am able to gather from the freshest washing-line
all those I want,
and have them dry on the warmth of my body
while I run for my soul
from a raging former owner?

Liberties, as truths
don’t hang on peacefully together.
Then why ought I to get married and grow kids,
allowing all that people to besiege me
with the sharp claws of their wills?
They say a guy's freedom concludes
as soon as someone else's starts.
I claim that a guy's freedom bids its leave
as immediately as the other guy's too.

But I understand there is indeed
a deeper sense with regard to
a man can be told his own master:
it is when not even our own company meddles in,
and we can move about all by ourselves,
released from the tyranny of our likings
and from the very necessity of having likings,
watching as perfect strangers
each gesture clinching by their own initiative
onto the barren bareness of our fingertips.

IN THE BLACKBERRY SEASON

Every morning, as soon as the sun shakes me,
I up and go, gathering each flower I encounter
on the paths all along I loaf.

Sometimes, I found them in such plenties,
they don’t fit in my hands as fingers
or like sweat flowing under my arms.
It is so when I bump into a cherry tree
which has had an early blossom.
I just can’t refrain from scaling
its harsh trunk, full of bumps
as any road anywhere I've roamed.
And, taking hold of one branch with the legs,
I straighten up and it is as though I began to ride,
one grip pulling the silky mane,
the other palm sheltering my sight
from the early promise of light.

It’s good to see things from a height
– my eyes glide over the electric poles,
the split between the buildings and the commuters' traffic
as a fleet of pigeons. But even more enjoyable
is to sense my weight warping downwards,
my body slowly dismounting
until we land on earth just safe and sound.
For the trees are even more beautiful
when you see them from the ground.

So I resume my journey, now assembling
the fruits that seduce me
from the fences on a lane.

Sometimes the harvest is so handsome,
I cannot store it only in the eyes,
and have to swallow a heavy share.
It is so in the blackberry season,
when, after a rich feast, I opt for a rest,
burying my belly beneath the terrain,
as loaded as a bulgy basket.

It is delicious to realise that something has returned
the element’s stubbornness and the summer’s stolen fire
in the species of such sweet juice.
Even more so is to feel all along my flesh
trickling down the lymph perfume,
filling me up till I’m like a plump berry
fallen off the branch just because so ripe,
only anticipating the time when shall arrive
the oncoming pomegranate era.

And so I go on crossing the mornings,
now amassing the shadows
the leaves drip on the autumn-fields.

Sometimes they are so numerous that a mattress of leaves
muffles the voice of my footprints
– the trees meditate sleepwalkingly,
better not to disturb their well-earned sleep.
Then I lie myself down for a nap
as a leaf over older leaf layers.
But after a brief relief, my fool-bells wake me up,
rung by all the things I met in my travelings,
which still surround and hug me as the moss
that affectionately envolves the tree that matures,
and warn me that I will never be material
for becoming anything without a company.

It mortifies me to know there are so many
who mock of my shadows cropping.
As though it made no difference if the leaves flew away,
since they are so many of them and would lose hold anyway.
They still can’t see the sodden simile.
For we are ourselves like those leaves
that clutch at the trunk tenaciously,
although we already know all attachment and pain
are just vain, later or sooner or in-between,
the seasons’ spin will swirl us in its wind,
and all we will manage to carry around
is the very dust which clung onto the skin
we now dress out.

And then I follow on the same story
always and always gathering
new mornings.

SELF-PORTRAIT BY HALF-LIGHT

the evening dims on me,
and stones
bend the way

everything that exists
lie only
outside of us

I am a road
someone else roams
to no purpose

and all else lies inside us,
we only
no longer

FOR ELIZA

ô toi que j’eusse aimeé, ô toi qui le savais!
(Baudelaire)


I know when you will on walk past me:
it’s sometime right after I’m warned
by the birds’ chatter, or briefly before
all sunbeams gather in a single dusty whisp,
then the glare is so strident that I simply
can’t go on sleeping.

I stand up.
My hands clean up
my ungainly rags.
You’d say I try to look my lousy best
and run to the square
where Eliza is about to pass.

I kind of love you, Eliza, though you don’t
know of me, and though I don’t
know who you are or how many.
There are so many voices and faces
wrangling and tangling in you,
that it is impossible to wield unity in it.

All I know of is that you come by rigorously
at eight and forty seven, and your name
I sort of overheard from the cafeteria waitress.
I reach you while you parade with your twisted leg,
my own copycats, raising those squinting eyes
in your medusa head, which can drive one mad.

And the buildings crane forward their petrified necks,
and windows jostle and take turns to watch you stride,
while you smoothly glide even more high-heeled
than the statue dressed in moss and patina,
which from its heights
examines the passer-by's.

I learned you work as an assistant
at the pawnshop, and since then
I’ve been living on the shadows you drop.
I can distinguish in the pitch of your breath
if you are upbeat or if the day
has burned earlier into ashes.

I can predict your humours because they flow
all along all what surrounds us, thus, if you smile,
the morning also leaps aflame, but if you whine,
the taps hush just not to compete with your crying,
and the colours all of a sudden go all shy and bleached
as though hidden behind a thick drizzly mist.

I follow you up every and each morning
for seventy-odd steps, no matter if you stumble on a pebble
or stop up in a fit of coughing. And I go on in pursuit
of your scent of ironed linen, whereas in your forehead
a crease goes on increasing,
splitting you in two:

the one who you were once,
and the one you can hardly notice.
But I adore you even so, single or multiple,
in your transit
or project
of an unknown earthly object.

But you never perceive me, Elisa,
and don’t have a clue as to what you lose
or whether there is nothing to lose...
Save that one day when you perceived on your way
my feet stamping your shade.
Then, as you turned your face

(having thought of running away,
but refraining,
having considered uttering a word,
were it not for the timid temper),
Eliza listlessly
smiled at me.

SLEEPWALKING

sleep
sometimes grips me
at the least suited hours

I was standing, and self-closing lids
seduced me all of a sudden
into a numb slumber

night has hidden itself on the false underside of dreams
on which memories get fixed
(my repressed thinkings taking a glimpse)

I wage a race with my shadow
and lose it, my body gradually detaches
in a narrow escape line goes out of sight

I fling my eyes without a wink
the sun the sky the sea
it’s me it’s me it’s me

as my image in a glass
I can only talk
about myselves

and all communication is impossible
the world outside us
well things are just not there

then I try my hard luck
and second-guess a password
beyond the doors of self-deception

it goes amiss, no panic,
there ought to be just plenty of
new false starts from which

to blunder around, never bother,
I have long been daydreaming about
some early dreamwalking

TODAY I DON'T LIE THAT WELL

today I don’t lie that well...

when the guard on the rounds asked if
I go on sleeping on the bench in front
of the florists’ stand, then, without the wit
to make up an alibi, I confessed that I
don’t, instead became lately rather fond
of the shadow from the man in bronze,
exactly on the spot in which, in half-sleep,
a couple of hours later on, the same idiot
scolds me off

today I don’t lie that well...

THE BEGGAR JESUS

Since they'd offered me something to drink,
I settled down on the kitchen porch,
between the cardboard boxes and the boys’ brawling,
as he stretched in the hand a sweaty glass of water.

Then I saw (if one can see among believers)
that my hands were bare and I had myself
nothing with which to pay them back,
except, maybe, with a sun (like this)

sparkling behind clouds.

A THEORY OF IDENTITY

Je est un autre
(Rimbaud)

1.

for what use language puts us into use?
what see things that see their selves through my eyes?
most mornings, when I gaze in the glass
it is a fortune I can notice my own features

in the mirror my face faces me as a sphinx,
and since I can’t escape my own maze,
its mouth full of void
swallows up my voice

I presume we must all be but rivers of Is and yous,
whirlpools that revolve around no nucleus,
shadows that can’t be fed and feed the hunger,
friends that won’t be met and can only wonder




2.

my name is throng and I talk in all the tongues,
I walk in each and every feet and squeeze
in my thousand hands the hands of all that greet me
by my own name, for my name is every man’s,
and I see even through the eyes of those
who go past pretending not to see us both

I never follow without a company,
and when I say what I fail to get over,
my friend stands for me,
and when I ache my aches and pains
my brother offers to my proud or shame
a sheltering shoulder.

Then I feel like melting our communicant souls together,
but soon realise I cannot help carrying on by my own,
and each day I use I feel smaller than one day ago,
for I can’t attain what dwells out of the grips
of a greedy but limited memory, and so am unable to reach
for whatever lies beyond the brinks of one single body

And thus each person amounts to
no more than one closed book


3.

on occasions I feel utterly bewildered at
the unfailing richness of this universe,
wishing I could only deserve
all of the gold squandered at dawn and
all of the copper to be robbed from dusk

I almost forget that my eyes never guard much of them,
that I've already seen so many, but even if I strained my best,
I couldn't possibly shake them with my hands from their rest
and might as well remain trapped inside my own inside,
like a reflex stuck in the looking-glass

for I am no matter what I am told
my own bored prisoner of a body
which controls me like an automaton.
one day, if Death comes,
it won’t ignore what it came for:

Death shall extinguish
just my flesh - and, in the end of the day,
who knows if I can only be found
there
where I will never be met

A VISIT TO THE CHURCH

But superstition, like belief, must die.
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
(Philip Larkin)


There must be no sadder creatures in all innumerable creation
than those church figures of saints.
The niche they dwell is also a sort of cell,
and if they could I suppose they would fly back home,
bound for the high sky in the dome,
for which their eyes long without ever reaching.
They ignore that, much beyond it,
another Sky, sometimes all blue too,
nestles birds whose singing clings less faded and manageable
than the one from those hand-painted on the frescos.

Six on the hour, the believers jostle
in search of God before the altar.
I find it weird that they call this place the house of God.
As if He wouldn’t feel more comfortable in distinct whereabouts:
sleeping on a doorstep with other street boys
or playing dice behind closed doors.
It’s no bad thing that they look for Him where they please,
it’s only as though they had taken the wrong car
and rode much beyond the stopping point
at which they shouldn’t have gotten off from the start.

There must be no sadder creature in all creation
than this church God.
He owes forgiveness to everybody,
but will never feel the glory
to deserve someone’s apology.
He has no history,
nor can he yearn for perfection,
because He has already got it.
He can’t feel love as an unremitting passion,
beyond good and evil.

There is death in the world and God lands on the Earth
in the hope of gathering one pure soul.
Poor devil! Goodness has nothing to do with
our willingness to be virtuous.
I don’t know a sole creature,
in full possession of his faculties,
who doesn’t consider himself a man of principle.
Goodness outruns our perceptive senses.
We are like those wooden saints,
which ignore the boundaries of their own transcendence.