From the Friulian Poesia a Casarsa (Poetry in Casarsa)
***
The Day of My Death
In a city, Trieste or Undine
along an avenue bordered by linden trees
in spring when the leaves
change color
I will fall dead
under a burning noonday sun
my eyes closing upon
the sky and its splendor.
Beneath the mild green of the lindens
I will sink into the
black of my death
parting from the sun and the leaves.
Beautiful young boys
will run in the light
I will now have lost
streaming from their schools
curls on their brows.
I will still be young,
in a bright shirt,
my hair tender in the rain
falling on the bitter dust.
I will still be warm
and a child running on the
soft asphalt of the avenue
will come and rest his hand
on my crystal loins.
***
To Rosario
Flesh weighs in the earth
light escapes from the sky
don’t lower your eyes poor boy
just because a shadow rests on your loins
Yes, laugh, sprightly boy,
feeling in your body
the earth warm and dense
and the sky fresh and clear
In its impoverishment the church
in harsh sin oppresses you
but in your bounding light
destiny in all its purity laughs.
***
Song of Church Bells
Evening at twilight entwines
amidst fountains
and my village takes shelter
in reticent colors.
I recall from a far distance the humming
of frogs, the moon, the sad cries
of the crickets.
Rosario’s singing slowly diminishes
across the fields while
to the sounds of church bells I die.
Stranger, you need not fear
my genial dash across the plains:
I am the spirit of love
returned to my village from faraway.
***
Pastoral of Narcissus
Yesterday in holiday clothing
(but it was Friday)
I wandered through the tender
meadows and sun-burnt fields.
Hands in my pockets…fourteen years old!
My body feverish with beauty!
I touched my thighs beneath the soft
linen folds of my pants.
A voice arose
from the shadows of the poplars
“Hey!” I cried,
thinking it was my companions…
But when I approached closer
there was a little blonde girl…
No, rather a young woman,
alone, in a crimson blouse
who gathered flowers in the the mist.
Hidden, I watched her…and in her place
I found that it was me:
I saw myself seated on a stump
beneath the branches of a poplar,
the eyes of my mother,
black as stable ground,
neck shining, a new jacket
and my hand resting on my loins.
From the Italian L’usignolo della Chiesa Cattolica (The Nightingale of the Catholic Church)
***
Little Nocturnal Poems
I
It has no foundation, this emptiness
brought by the new season
submitted to an unknown force
where reason, assailed,
gives relief to animal senses
awakened in new spaces.
Here we feel ourselves somewhat
necessary, seized again
so that this wing, warm, enables
us to see the vanity in any sign
which would insist on our remaining unrecognized
and to see far off a true human time.
II
In the obscurity
of a Saturday night
it expands without end,
a frontier inside of which
our corrupt presences
are human: in silence
another silence, and in
an echo the echo of the cosmos
dying in the street.
Unmeasured, one of my gestures
propagates itself to that point
where God is not:
and thereupon pure dread
fills my heart.
III
When living is at its most difficult
Is life at its most absolute?
On the evening banks of my
mute senses
the old reason
in which I recognized myself
withdraws: it is an inner
pathway beneath stifling overgrowth
where all is nature.
Exhausting labor
of an obscure subsistence,
you alone are necessary…
And you carry me softly
beyond human frontiers.
IV
Mysterious lightness
of the dead weight of what
is now life, candor
of a blemished heart…
Whose feelings are like lace
after midnight
when a prostitute,
mute, silent, returns home
It is truly there,
the wind of inner life
which never slackens,
and the monotonous variation
of feelings: now,
happy, who knows why,
(for nothing, or even more
like a prostitute
I come back from
a hopeless night of roaming)
burning gloriously
with life: prey to forces
now living, now spent