Introduction of the anarchist baker Bortolo Scarmagnan
strike the match
okay I’m striking it
Struck roughly, the match fires up the oven.
The century is almost over; just five hours left
give or take a few before dawn.
The hour doesn’t matter, what matters
is the glacial rolling of the sky
down the rivers. And the oven, today,
somewhere in Venice.
What matters today is the oven’s vaulted dome.
Flour turns into bread, and bread is flesh.
Bread is these thighs waking up
in the middle of the night
brushed by another’s legs
and then slipping away before daybreak
to fire up the oven and the wood.
But when the sun rises, the bread won’t do.
The constellations, sifted over the ground, do not shine
when everything is shattered by gendarmes
and a steamship offers the only way out.
Requiem for the embaúbas
permission to speak of hunger
that tasteless loudmouth
hunger is no more
says the lawyer, esquire,
as he lights a cigarette
that idly dies
alongside a swivel chair that twirls
glassware
routines
fruits of polished perpetuity
in a blue bowl
why harp on that old matter
now that naturalism
now that revolution
and rats it’s well known
it’s been said often enough
and well enough
hunger is démodé
better to speak of love
much better
permission to state that it brings cramps
that hunger spreads
like leprosy
in outbreaks of amber
in the middle of the night
in the middle of the day hunger
polyeidetic variegated iridescent
beyond its fearful retinue
of skeletal cows
and swollen children
permission to speak of hunger without cramps
the gray hunger of time
to think of hunger
to say
the word hunger
with its mouth open
and then think:
of time
of books of
crustaceans of brilliant hues
and yes of flowers
of flowers too
and of space to portray their colorful
disorder
in another way
Ants, thousands and thousands, billions,
blackening the myrmecophytic trunk,
piling into the knots, swarming along the gigantic leaves,
the sparse gigantic leaves, superlative asterisks
of the embaúba. Density of its wood: 0.02.
Ideal for laminating, for slicing
into the finest of shards, parallelipipeds,
and so they fall, these trunks,
they roll — never that tall —
and, therefore, roll
as if they had grown for this purpose
only for this.
The fine layer of moss around the trunks
is soaked with mud,
and now, without asterisks, without ants,
leaving mere stumps behind,
they roll, mutilated cylinders,
down to the creeks
where the next flood will sweep them toward the sea. And they go on rolling
water-borne, juxtaposed,
the scales of some giant reptile,
blending their perfumes with those of nobler hardwoods
in the organic soup of the Amazon.
Then they arrive
at a place of men not necessarily
muscular, but yes,
well-fed, and cranes, and shivers of fever,
as there always are.
The trunks are loaded
onto the truck, loaded
onto the ship, set sail
and travel south
to Santos and other ports.
In memory of Anna Stefania Lauff, match factory girl
the word joy does not say
leap into the middle of the puddle in full sun
does not say morning dip in the iris of your eye
jacaranda flowers above and below does not say
look there’s the sea
doesn’t sink its feet
in the sand every so often
doesn’t know, with the day’s first sip of coffee,
the word pain
ought to
be banned
whoever writes pain has to
clarify
where and when and why and whether it radiates
stabs cuts reeks or chafes inside or out
or both
whether it emerges for instance in a crazed impulse to smash
everything against the wall
or in barely perceptible nausea
or in the paralysis of a reptile suddenly aware of a cat
otherwise what is it?
a calligraphic discharge of guilt
the easy justification of verse
on the other hand
the word match
hints at something quick and fricative
two or three fingers clasped together the word
match
hints at a tiny fire
but neither explains verbi gratia that:
In principio creavit deus caelum
et terram.
And the earth
was
void.
For God said:
…………Produtos tradicionais de Companhia Fiat Lux
…………matches you can count on,
…………há mais de vinte anos fabricando
…………and distributing
…………matches
…………throughout Brazil.
And God said:
……………………The girl gets half: a minor’s pay,
……………………that’s minor pay,
……………………and someday,
……………………if she buckles down,
……………………and springs for two years’ instruction,
……………………she can become a matchmaker’s apprentice.
……………………Not just anyone.
And said:
…………The brands Olho,
…………Pinheiro
…………and Beija-flor.
…………Proof against the humidity
…………do nosso clima
…………traiçoeiro.
And said:
……………………Besides
……………………she doesn’t speak
……………………Portuguese
……………………and the country she comes from,
……………………who knows whether it ever existed
……………………at all?
And he said:
…………Confie na mais alta
…………qualidade
…………of Swedish industry
And said: Phosphonecrosis?
Nonsense.
Antimony
potassium chlorate
crimson allotropy
of the most fundamental
element.
Your daughter is going to
grind a little glass,
that’s all.
And he said:
…………Little sticks of embaúba wood,
…………in several sizes.
…………Little boxes
…………in several attractive
…………collectible designs.
And said:
From eight to six
and bring her own food
or money.
And God said:
…………Fiat Lux
…………Let there be light
…………always thinking
…………of our sweet
…………and coquettish
…………donas de casa
…………brasileiras.
Bucolic interlude
it’s not that they’re always the same
the circumstances
surrounding the brief lifespan of the match
the fingers that strike it come in many forms
left-handed, sinister,
mutilated
sheathed in scent
calloused in a pattern
that’s always unique
that announces an occupation
through a particular distinctive
grime
ink? soil? grease? blood?
—but always more or less in a hurry
fingers firm, careless, or affected
as they strike the match
to make things happen
Certain stories unfold only in cloud forests
or places like them
farther to the south, where the sierras
don’t amount to much, just hills,
undulating, quasi-maternal,
darkly lined with coffee trees.
There, dinner is made
out of amphibians
caught during the night
a dismembered mass of legs and onions
floating in broth.
Like warty fruits
harvested from puddles.
The tropics have certain charms. Like
the offspring of Hungarian immigrants
who hunt frogs
for soup
made with coconut milk
in a town with an unlikely name
—Solemar—
where pyramid
church towers
taste of Budapest, of Lugoj,
of places glimpsed through the slits
of an armored train,
a town on a coast in the Antipodes,
where they chat
on the porch-front
in Romanian,
conspire in Hungarian, cook
in German, ponder, weave
memories of snow
in the mosquito afternoon
amid cup after cup of coffee with brown sugar
and chilled juice of sugar cane,
jaca, manga, cashew fruit
flavored with spearmint
as evening falls.
Hic incipit vita nova. Maria Zélia political prison, 1935
fiat
mirrors facing mirrors
facing mirrors
and only through the blue is the intangible illuminated
a pathway that slides
at a slant
through long corridors
colonnades
floor tiles
that finally
circles back?
a giant wheel
of repeated things?
in which, nonetheless,
minor differences
important for practical effects
could be seen
if it were possible to toss, there, a match?
between one episode and the next
cigarette butts
twisted letter openers
a typewriter
missing its keys
a miniature horse
boxes of matches
tiny reflections
of the faint light of the match
that isn’t there —
would they indicate advance or retreat?
Stains on the pages of the book;
maps of minor flowerings of mold
gradual and slow
inside the cupboards
silent signs of the passage
of two or three termites
next to the name
Blasio Demetrio,
translator of Dante
in the prison,
and next to the name
Marcelo du Nancy,
agronomist in Bolivia,
and next to other names,
abbreviated, or just initials
at the bottom of letters
written in different hands.
And meanwhile, in the interrogation room
multiple identities spring up as the answer
to questions that demand
his solitary answer, handholds amid error,
transitive attributions
that never arise.
Important to underline
they never arise.
Because to flee, to escape like
…………water
…………drool
…………blood
…………piss
through the fingers of the moment,
the voice multiplies its name,
its life, stories and letters
proliferate as lies
all pointing only
to young Fulvio, who makes himself author:
conspiratorial letters of others,
names, signatures,
and so the others flee:
drops of water
between the fingers.
Hic incipit vita nova.