Corpodibacco presents '7 Italian Poets'

----
7 Italian poets -- introduction

I know that there are young poets in my country and in my city, who read their poems in bars and other places on certain dedicated nights, and who publish their books with little publishing houses at their own expenses (but not always). I know this but for some reason I don't know who they are, I don't know their names nor their work. Because of what I am or what I am not, most of the time I am turned toward an hypothetical past and always trying to read things of he past like they were written today, usable today. So I miss a great deal of the present.

Certainly most of the 7 poets presented here (in no particular order) are already translated and known in the English-speaking world, and maybe the readers of Dennis Cooper would expect something more outlandish by me. Or maybe not, I don't know.
----I mean, I am aware that these are not contemporary or about-to-be-known artists as they should be, but sometimes also the classics are like young mistreated artists, hidden by everything that is known and not know of them.

Anyway, I love all these poets. And others too who are not present here but should have been (Ceronetti, Saba, Gozzano, Palazzeschi, Govoni, Tessa, Rebora to name a few.) (I was defeated by quantity: maybe another time).

The translations are all mine (I don't know if there are other versions around of these very poems, probably in most cases so). Poetry should never be translated, but anyway. I tried my best. All the poems are also gathered here. for my future integrations. Have a nice read.

--corpodibacco


* note from DC: Due to blogger's width restrictions, some of the longer lines in the poems below will undoubtedly be broken at incorrect points. I've made the type as small as I could without making the poems unreadably tiny. Hopefully, those blogger-caused line breaks will be evident. Please take their incorrectness into account and restore them in your imagination. Sorry and thanks.


____________

1. Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)



Many, including possibly me, will argue that Eugenio Montale caused entire generations of italians to consider poetry something you don't have to understand, and where words are more important than meanings, eventually causing the production of tons of wasted poetical efforts. In fact at his beginnings Montale was considered the bearer of a local variation of "hermetism" that could be fully appreciated only if you were very well learned. And this had many reasons to be, including the upcoming Mussolini's fascist regime and its censorship. The famous poem "don't ask us for the word" is basically one of the ways by which an hermetist poet could tell Mussolini to fuck off.
----Anyway Montale's poems, literary or not, always have surprising ways to create music in the verse, which cracks and fiddles continuously producing unexpected associations of words that make his true genius, comparable for musical talent to Dante's. And they talk about something: something which is hidden and cannot be said and is the mark of solitude for every man, etcetera.
----Later in his years Montale's poetry became more direct, although the literary approach never abandoned him. But it is better not to forget that literariness is the disgrace of any European writer and it is very hard to shake off.

The first here is one of Montale's most popular poems. Italo Calvino wrote an important essay about it in 1976. The second is also a very famous poem of his. They have no title.

*

Possibly one morning going in a air of glass
dry, turning over I'll see the miracle perform:
nothingness at my back, void behind
me, terrorized as a drunk.

Then like if on a screen, will be camping straight off
trees houses hills for the customary deceit.
But it will be too late; and I will quietly go
among the men who don't turn, with my secret.

Forse un mattino andando in un'aria di vetro,
arida, rivolgendomi, vedrò compirsi il miracolo:
il nulla alle mie spalle, il vuoto dietro
di me, con un terrore di ubriaco.

Poi come s'uno schermo, s'accamperanno di gitto
alberi case colli per l'inganno consueto.
Ma sarà troppo tardi; ed io me ne andrò zitto
tra gli uomini che non si voltano, col mio segreto.


*

Often the evil of life I've met :
it was the strangled creek gurgling,
it was the curling over of the parched
leave, it was the slumped horse.

Good I haven't known, outside the prodigy
disclosed by divine Indifference :
it was the statue in the somnolence
at noon, and the cloud, and the high arisen hawk.

Spesso il male di vivere ho incontrato :
era il rivo strozzato che gorgoglia,
era l'incartocciarsi della foglia
riarsa, era il cavallo stramazzato.

Bene non seppi, fuori del prodigio
che schiude la divina Indifferenza :
era la statua nella sonnolenza
del meriggio, e la nuvola, e il falco alto levato.


____________

2. Sandro Penna (1906-1977)



Easily forgotten today, Sandro Penna is something that happened in Italy in total isolation and doubtfully could happen again. He was, says the blurb on my Garzanti edition of his complete poems, "the sole Italian poet to speak at the top of his voice, saying very clearly who he was and what he wanted, as opposed to the great and winning Montale's formula of negativity".
----Sandro Penna was a solitary man who believed in love and wanted to make love to young boys, and most of his poetical production revolves around this subject. "Solo fanciulli nelle mie poesie!/Ma io non so parlare d'altre cose./Le altre cose son tutte noiose" he wrote ("Only young boys in my poems!/but I can't speak of anything else/all the other things are boring").
----It is maybe not immediate to grasp today the immense amount of courage and indifference for the common sense of the Italian catholic/communist society one ought to have to write like Penna wrote, in those Italian years (forties to seventies) so moralistic and political: for almost thirty years Penna consistently brooded poems of few verses, usually simple descriptions of the state of his heart in the surrounding world. Nothing but solitude, blue skies, young boys, love and desire and the disappointment of relief.

I have translated more than tow of his poems since they are so short.

*

It was my city, the empty city
at dawn, filled with a desire of mine.
But my love chant, my truest
to the others was a song unknown.

Era la mia città, la città vuota
all'alba, piena di un mio desiderio.
Ma il mio canto d'amore, il mio più vero
era per gli altri una canzone ignota.

*

Tell me, great dreaming trees,
isn't your heart beating when love
makes the cicada sing, when the sun
surprises and leaves fixed in time
the heartbeat of the tender lizard
lost between two hands in a sweet idleness?
My heart is also beating, and yet I am not
the young boy's innocent victim.

Ditemi, grandi alberi sognanti,
a voi non batte il cuore quando amore
fa cantar la cicala, quando il sole
sorprende e lascia immobile nel tempo
il batticuore alla tenera lucertola
perduta fra due mani in un dolce far niente?
Anche a me batte il cuore, e pur non sono
io del fanciullo vittima innocente.

*

Living is to love something.
Today it is the young boy who stole a pair
of shoes from that very arrogant gentleman.

I protected the young boy. I saved him
from who knows what darkness. (The handsome boy
who steals the beautiful dogs to love them).

Vivere è per amare qualche cosa.
Oggi è il fanciullo che ha rubato un paio
di scarpe a quel signore arrogantissimo.

Ho difeso il fanciullo. L'ho salvato
da chi sa quale buio. (Il bel fanciullo
che ruba i cani belli per amarli).

*

With a rapid quirk you freed
the forehead from the tuft. Fierily
you set fire to your cigarette.
But falls back the tuft. And the season
hesitates, and very languishingly laughs.

Con un rapido vezzo hai liberato
la fronte dal ciuffetto. Fieramente
hai dato fuoco alla tua sigaretta.
Ma ricade il ciuffetto. E la stagione
indugia, e ride assai languidamente.

*

Possibly youth is only this
perpetual loving the senses and do not repent.

Forse giovinezza è solo questo
perenne amare i sensi e non pentirsi.


____________

3. Antonia Pozzi (1912-1938)



"Her spirit made you think to those mountain plants that can only expand at the margins of clefts, on the edge of abysses. She was hypersensitive, with a sweet creative anguish, but also a woman with a strong character and a beautiful philosophical intelligence; possibly she was the innocent prey of her father's paranoid censorship on her life and her verse... The greatly loved Lombardia, that Nature of plants and rivers comforted her certainly more than her own kin". (Maria Corti, italianist, from Wikipedia).

Antonia Pozzi killed herself when the world took a turn... which bleakly looked like the one of total control that her father wanted for her. "The age of words came to an end" she wrote. Certain spirits cannot really stand in an age of totalitarianism and war, and so we will never know if her poetical talents would have ever brought her to publish and be for everyone the poet that she was in her private life. All her work has been published posthumously.

Her verse is sometimes too lyrical for me, yet some other time it is just perfect, like that of the most experienced poet, refrained from singing too high-- for too much experience or compassion or understanding.

*

It rained all night
on the memories of summer.

At darkness we got out
entering a gloomy thundering of stones,
standing on the levee we held lanterns
to explore the danger of the bridges.

Pale at dawn we saw the swallows
soaking wet unmoving upon threads
spying mysterious signal of departure --

and were mirroring them on the earth
fountains by the wasted faces.

Piovve tutta la notte
sulle memorie d'estate.

A buio uscimmo
entro un tuonare lugubre di pietre,
fermi sull'argine reggemmo lanterne
a esplorare il pericolo dei ponti.

All'alba pallidi vedemmo le rondini
aui fili fradice immote
spiare cenni arcani di partenza --

e le specchiavano sulla terra
le fontane dai volti disfatti

*

For a sun ray is not
thawing
Still the pale tangle
of shadows
is the sole decoration of the earth
below the naked trees.

In Norway -- now -- on the ice
children are dancing, dressed
with red clothes;
with the blades of the skates they are drawing
silvery flowers
on what was
murky waters --

Oh to freeze even more,
to be for the eyes
that are watching from the shores
just a gleaming slab, hard --
while fogs dissolve, at the edges
of the forests -- the mirages
of aurora --

Per un raggio di sole non è
lo sgelo.
Ancora l'intrico pallido
delle ombre
è l'unico ornamento della terra
sotto gli alberi nudi.

In Norvegia -- ora -- sul ghiaccio
danzano i bimbi, vestiti
di panno rosso;
con le lame dei pattini disegnano
fiori d'argento
su quella che fu
acqua oscura --

Oh, agghiacciarsi ancor più,
essere per gli occhi
che dalle rive guardano
solo una lastra lucente, dura --
mentre dissolvono le nebbie, ai limiti
delle foreste -- i miraggi
dell'aurora --


____________

4. Pierpaolo Pasolini (1922-1975)



Pierpaolo Pasolini doesn't really need to be introduced. Poet, novelist, playwright and director, Pasolini among the Italian writers of the past century is perhaps the most modern one, the most likely to be widely understood today. This is non necessarily a merit, because who can vouch for the cleverness or good taste of posterity?
----To me anyway there's something unbeatable in Pasolini's style: its clearness, and solemnity, and the frankness (although not complete) of his personal presence in the verse. His voice was also very political, and many are convinced (probably with reason) that Pasolini's political stances are one thing with his style and an inseparable part of his work. This is not how I read his pages anyway. I don't know what to do with most of his Marxism, and his invectives against the political establishment are too bleak and deprived of hope to be of any use to me. He was rightfully outraged with the Communist party that expelled him because homosexual, and yet he never moved far from that influence. He dreamed for a revolution, and yet he was against progress and modernity (any form of technology included).
----Anyway to me his descriptions of life and the reasons of the people, of the dying cities and the good and bad faces and the voices of a disappearing Italy (and world) are incredibly powerful. His dry desperation, shy and enraged, is like a mirror in which the globe crudely and yet poetically is reflected.

Most of Pasolini's famous poems are very long. Although I could quote passages from them that are wonderful by themselves, they deserve to be read in the whole. Thus I am translating here an average short poem (by his standards) that Pasolini wrote when in Israel (or better in Palestine), in 1963, shooting locations for a movie.
----This is followed by another very short poem, one of his earliest, wrote in the dialect of Pasolini's adoptive motherland, the region of Friuli.

*

A seafront. White lamps, squashed.
Old pavements, gray of tropical humidity.
Short stairs, to the black
sand; with pieces of papers, trash.
Silence like in the northern cities.
Here are the boys with carrion-colored blue-jeans,
and short fitting white t-shirts,
dirty, walking along the parapets
-- like Algerians sentenced to death.
Some farther away in the warm shadow
against more parapets. And the noise of the sea,
not letting think... Behind the large
scraped sidewalk (towards the pier),
boys, younger; poles; wooden
crates; a blanket, laid on the black sand.
There they stretch; then two stand up;
reaching the opposite sidewalk,
along bar lights, with porches by the rotten wood
(memory of Calcutta, Nairobi...)
(Dance music, far away,
in a Hotel bar, from which only
a deep zum-zum comes, and scorching
whining of oriental musical phrases.)
They enter a shop, wide open...
so much filled with light as it is poor,
without a piece of metal, of glass... They come out,
climb down. They eat, in silence,
against the invisible sea,
what they have bought. The one
stretched on the blanket doesn't move; he smokes,
a hand on his lap. Nobody
looks at who's looking at them (like gypsies,
lost in their dreams).

Un lungomare. Lumi bianchi, schiacciati.
Vecchi lastrici, grigi d'umidità tropicale.
Scalette, verso la sabbia
nera; con carte, rifiuti.
Un silenzio come nelle città del Nord.
Ecco ragazzi con blu-jeans color carogna,
e magliucce bianche, aderenti,
sudice, che camminano lungo le spallette
-- come algerini condannati a morte.
Qualcuno più lontano nell'ombra calda
contro altre spallette. E il rumore del mare,
che non fa ragionare... Dietro il largo
d'un marciapiede scrostato (verso il molo),
dei ragazzi, più giovani; pali; cassette
di legno; una coperta, stesa sulla sabbia nera.
Stanno lì sdraiati; poi due si alzano;
guadagnano l'opposto marciapiede,
lungo luci di bar, con verande di legni marci
(ricordo di Calcutta... di Nairobi...)
(Una musica da ballo, lontana,
in un bar di hotel, di cui arriva
solo uno zum-zum profondo, e lagni
cocenti di frasi musicali d'oriente.)
Entrano in un negozio, tutto aperto...
tnto più pieno di luce quanto più povero,
senza un metallo, un vetro... Riescono,
ridiscendono. Mangiano, in silenzio,
contro il mare che non si vede,
ciò che hanno comprato. Quello
disteso sulla coperta non si muove; fuma,
con una mano sul grembo. Nessuno
guarda chi li guarda (come gli zingari,
perduti nei loro sogni).


*

Mild evening at the last gleam, in the ditch
waters are rising, a plump female
walks through the field.

I remember you, Narcìs, you had the color
of the evening, when the bells
for the dead are tolled.


Sère imbarlumìde, tal fossal
'a crès l'aghe, 'na femine plene
'a ciamìne tal ciamp.

Jo ti ricuàrdi, Narcìs, tu vévis il color
da la sère, quànt lis ciampanìs
'a sunin di muàrt.


____________

5. Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 - 1970)



Giuseppe Ungaretti became a poet during World War I. He was a soldier on the terrible Carso front from 1914 to 1917 and literally wrote his first poems in the trenches, under enemy fire. Actually the trenches of WWI where filled with poets and artists, on every front. But few came back. Ungaretti did and never ceased to write poetry since then, in the years becoming with Montale a sort of institutional Italian modern poet, although of very different character and language.
----He distinguished himself as a poet very early, so unique was his cry from the war. His first book of poems, Il porto sepolto ("The Buried Harbor"), reprinted in 1923 had the honor of a foreword by Benito Mussolini, even though (or probably exactly for that) nothing in what Ungaretti wrote then was political or social.
----Ungaretti is instead a very lyrical poet, the lyrical poet-- and I can't think of any other sample of Italian poetry where the man and his soul come to light so naked, so clearly, so tragically.

I translated some of his early poems, even though Ungaretti's production is very vast and equally rich. Ungaretti himself brought together the entire bunch of his poems under the name Vita di un uomo ("Life of a man") -- and so is named the 900+ pages book from which the following works are taken.

*

-- San Martino del Carso
Little Valley of the Solitary Tree, August 27th 1916

Of these houses
remained
but some
tattered wall

Of many
that connected with me
remained but
not even that much

Yet in the heart
no cross goes missing

It is my heart
the most wrecked village

-- San Martino del Carso
Valloncello dell'Albero Isolato il 27 agosto 1916

Di queste case
non è rimasto
che qualche
brandello di muro

Di tanti
che mi corrispondevano
non è rimasto
neppure tanto

Ma nel cuore
nessuna croce manca

E' il mio cuore
il paese più straziato

*

-- Drowsing
Little Valley of Peak Four, August 6th 1916

I attend the raped night

The air is riddled
like a lace
by the gunshots
of the men
portrayed
in the trenches
like slugs in their shells

It seems to me
like if a panting
swarm of stonecutters
was beating the pavement
of lava stones
of my streets
and I was listening to it
without seeing it
drowsing

-- In Dormiveglia
Valloncello di Cima Quattro il 6 agosto 1916

Assisto la notte violentata

L'aria è crivellata
come una trina
dalle schioppettate
degli uomini
ritratti
nelle trincee
come le lumache nel loro guscio

Mi pare
che un affannato
nugolo di scalpellini
batta il lastricato
di pietra di lava
delle mie strade
ed io l'ascolti
non vedendo
in dormiveglia

*

--Weight
Mariano June 29th 1916

That farm worker
relies on the medal
of St. Anthony
and goes lightly

But well lonesome and well naked
without mirage
I carry my soul

-- Peso
Mariano il 29 giugno 1916

Quel contadino
si affida alla medaglia
di Sant'Antonio
e va leggero

Ma ben sola e ben nuda
senza miraggio
porto la mia anima


____________

6. Antonio Porta (1935 - 1989)



Born Leo Paolazzi, Antonio Porta (Porta means "door") took his pen name from the house where he lived in Milan, which, has the story goes, had more doors than windows. He died quite young (possibly of AIDS?) but I don't have much more informations about him. He was part of a sort of experimental way in the italian literature of the sixties and seventies.
----The first poems I myself tried to write were induced by the read of my mother's copy of Porta's book of poems Passi Passaggi.
----His ability to create images I can immediately recognize --and yet be stupefied by-- overwhelms me.

The following poems are taken from Passi Passaggi (1979) and Invasioni (1984).

*

The hole produces feces
at the center of the burning bush
the ghost of fecundity is consumed
"if you ever had a love" I ask myself
with deafly hollow words I motion
to say: see, I don't, I don't understand, so there
how rhetoric is the question: I havent had, you
havent, you can answer, had anything from the mirror
little tend is a hard-on under the sheets
at morning he says it was just a dream

12.3 - 4.10.1977



il buco produce feci
al centro del roveto ardente
si consuma il fantasma della fecondità
"se tu hai mai avuto un amore" mi chiedo
con parole sorde da muto faccio segno
per dire: capisci, non, non capisco, ecco
come è retorica la domanda: io non ho, tu
non hai, puoi rispondere, avuto nulla dallo specchio
piccola tenda è un'erezione sotto il lenzuolo
al mattino dice che è stato solo un sogno

12.3 - 4.10.1977


*

The dogs of Aversa have two tails
The dogs of Aversa have four lines of teeth
the bitches of Aversa pup on the front door
no one can get back in the house by now abandoned
no one wants to shoot at the bitches-mothers of Aversa
more than three hundred are the dogs of Aversa and they go hunting
at the shops downtown faster than a 7.65 the dogs
on the streets it's too risky to shoot at the dogs
of Aversa who tear apart women they started
with the crazy one just outside the fence just a little
far from the gates of Aversa's madhouse park
in a state of siege after 36 hours of agony the crazy one died
they counted all those hours how much life can resist
to the bites of the dogs: I am also about to become
a dog of Aversa!

20.6.1978



I cani di Aversa hanno due code
I cani di Aversa hanno quattro fila di denti
le cagne di Aversa partoriscono sull'uscio di casa
nessuno può rientrare nella casa ormai deserta
nessuno vuole sparare alle cagne-madri di Aversa
sono più di trecento i cani di Aversa e vanno a caccia
nei negozi del centro più veloci di una calibro 7.65 i cani
c'è troppo rischio a sparare per le strade ai cani
doi Aversa che fanno a pezzi le donne hanno cominciato
con una matta appena fuori dal recinto appena un poco
lontana dal cancello del parco del manicomio di Aversa
in stato di assedio dopo 36 ore di agonia la matta è morta
tutte le hanno contate quelle ore quanto la vita resiste
ai morsi dei cani: anch'io sto per diventarlo
un cane di Aversa!

20.6.1978

*

You raise up your head for a moment
a deep breath and in no time
down again breath-holding to suck
darkness and moans

14.12.1982



rialzi un attimo la testa
un respiro profondo e subito
di nuovo in apnea a succhiare
buio e gemiti

14.12.1982


____________

7. Ardengo Soffici (1879-1964)



Better known as one of the great Italian painters who in Paris mixed and clashed with the Futurist movement, Ardengo Soffici also wrote many essays and some incredibly beautiful poems. I know some of them from an old anthology of various Italian poetry I got from the used bookshop where I used to work. I don't know if they are published by themselves in Italy or abroad, but they certainly should be.

Some of the poems are about Soffici's experience as an official during World War I, and very different in tone (although not in the sense of impotence and despair) from those of Ungaretti, for example.
----Anyway I have chosen here a very long sort of self-celebrating poem of Soffici... dated 1915. Too long maybe, but really, really great. I consider it one of the most beautiful things ever written in verse in modern Italian language (not so much in translation, probably!).
----It also revolves around Soffici's years in Paris-- so in that respect it could relate with someone's experience here.


-- Rainbow

Soak seven paintbrushes into your 36 years old heart, yesterday April 7th,
And light up the face worn-out by ancient seasons.

You rode life like the nickeled sirens of the carousels,

Around,
From one city to the other, from philosophy to delirium,
From love to passion, majesty to misery :
There is no church, movie theater, newsroom or tavern you wouldn't know;

You slept in every family's bed.

A Carnival could be made
of all sorrows
forgotten, with the umbrella, in European Cafés,
set off in between the smoke, with handkerchiefs, inside sleeping-cars going north, south.

Countries, hours,
There are certain voices that come with you everywhere like the moon and the dogs;
But also the whistle of a siren
stirring up the colors of morning
and of dreams
it is not forgotten, nor the perfume of certain nights drowned in topaz armpits.
These cold jonquils I have here on the table next to the ink,
were painted on the walls of the room no.19 at the Hotel des Anglais in Rouen :
A train was walking down the nocturnal quai
under our window
beheading the reflexes of versecolored lanterns
between barrels of wine of Sicily;
And the Seine was a garden of burning flags.

There is no time anymore :
Space
is a twilight worm curling up in a drop of phosphorus :

Every thing is present :
Like in 1902 you are in Paris in a garret,
covered by 35 squared centimeters of sky
liquefied in the dormer glass;
La Ville still offers you every morning
the blossomed bouquet of Square de Cluny;
from Boulevard Saint Germain, bursting of trams and buses,
comes at night to these countrysides the drunk voice of the news vendor woman
of Rue de la Harpe:
"Paris-curses", "L'Intransigeant", "la Presse".
The shop in Chausseures Road is always competing with the stars;
and I am stroking my hands all imbued of sunset's liquors
like when I contemplated suicide, near Rigoletto's house.

Yes, dear!
The luckiest man is the one who knows how to live in the contingency like flowers do :
Look at the gentleman passing by
lighting a cigar, proud of his virile force
retrieved from the fourth pages of the newspapers,

Or that Cavalry soldier, galloping in the indigo of the barracks
with a lily tuft between his teeth.

Eternity shines in a flight of a fly.

Put the colors of you eyes one next to the other;
Design your bow :
The story is fleeting like a goodbye at the station ;
And the tricolored automobile of the sun is beating, vainer and vainer, its record in between the old machineries of cosmos.
You do remember, together with a kiss sowed in the darkness,
of the window of a German bookshop, Avenue de l'Opera,
and the goat grazing between the gorses
above the ruins of the stairs of Dario's palace in Persepolis.
It is enough to look around
and write like dreaming,
to revive the face of our joy.

I remember all the climates that stroke themselves against my skin of love,
All the places and civilizations
beaming at my desire :
snows,
yellow seas,
gongs,
convoys :
the path of Bombay and the burned gold of Iran
I carry a hieroglyphic of it on the black wing.
Sunflower soul, the phenomenon converges into this dancing center,
but the most beautiful song is the one of the naked senses.

Silence, midday music,
here and into the world, circular poetry :
Today is getting married with Forever
In the diadem the iris arises.
I sit at my table, and I smoke and watch :
here is a young leaf trilling in the market garden opposite;
The white doves are wheeling the air like love letters thrown from the window :
I know the symbol, the figure, the
Electric bond
Sympathy of faraway things;
But fruits are needed, lights and multitudes
to pull tight the miracle festoon of this easter.
The day is drowning itself in the scarlet dell of summer;
there are no words anymore
for the bridge of fire and gems.

Youth, you will pass like everything does at the theater.
Tant pis! Then I'll make myself a fabulous suit of old affiches.

-- Arcobaleno

Inzuppa 7 pennelli nel tuo cuore di 36 anni finiti ieri, 7 aprile,
E rallumina il viso disfatto delle antiche stagioni.
Tu hai cavalcato la vita come le sirene nichelate dei caroselli da fiera,

In giro,
Da una città all'altra, di filosofia in delirio,
D'amore in passione, di regalità in miseria :
Non c'è chiesa, cinematografo, redazione o taverna che tu non conosca;
Tu hai dormito nel letto d'ogni famiglia.

Ci sarebbe da fare un carvevale
Di tutti i dolori
Dimenticati, von l'ombrello, nei caffè d'Europa,
Partiti tra il fumo, coi fazzoletti, negli sleeping-cars diretti al nord, al sud.

Paesi, ore,
Ci sono voci che accompagnano pertutto come la luna e i cani;
Ma anche il fischio di una sirena
Che rimescola i colori del mattino
E dei sogni
Non si dimentica, né il profumo di certe notti affogate nelle ascelle di topazio.

Queste fredde giunchiglie che ho sulla tavola accanto all'inchiostro,
Eran dipinte sui muri della camera n. 19 dell'Hotel des Anglais a Rouen :
Un treno passeggiava sul quai notturno
Sotto la nostra finestra
Decapitando le botti del vino di Sicilia;
E la Senna era un giardino di bandiere infiammate.

Non c'è più tempo :
Lo spazio
E' un verme crepuscolare che si ragghiaccia in una goccia di fosforo :

Ogni cosa è presente :
Come nel 1902 tu sei a Parigi in una soffitta,
Coperto da 35 centimetri quadri di cielo
Liquefatto nel vetro dell'abbaino;
La Ville t'offre ancora ogni mattina
il boquet fiorito dello Square de Cluny;
Dal boulevard Saint Germain, scoppiare di trams e d'autobus,
Arriva, la sera, a queste campagne, la voce briaca della giornalaia
Di rue de la Harpe :
"Paris-curses", "l'Intransigeant", "la Presse".
Il negozio di Chaussures Raoul fa sempre concorrenza alle stelle;
E mi accarezzo le mani tutte intrise dei liquori del tramonto
Come quando pensavo al suicidio, vicino alla casa di Rigoletto.

Si, caro!
L’uomo più fortunato è colui che sa vivere nella contingenza al pari dei fiori:
Guarda il signore che passa
E accende il sigaro, orgoglioso della sua forza virile
Recuperata nelle quarte pagine dei quotidiani,
O quel soldato di cavalleria galoppante nell’indaco della caserma
Con ciocchetta di lilla fra i denti.
L’eternità splende in un volo di mosca.
Metti l’uno accanto all’altro i colori dei tuoi occhi;
Disegna il tuo arco:
La storia è fuggevole come un saluto alla stazione;

E l’automobile tricolore del sole batte, sempre più invano,
Il suo record fra i vecchi macchinari del cosmo.
Tu ricordi, insieme ad un bacio seminato nel buio,
D’una vetrina di librario tedesco, Avenue de l’Opéra,
E della capra che brucava le ginestre
Sulle ruine della scala del palazzo di Dario a Persepoli.
Basta guardarsi intorno
E scriver come si sogna,
Per rianimare il volto della nostra gioia.
Ricordo tutti i climi che si son carezzati alla mia pelle d’amore,
Raggianti al mio desiderio:
Nevi,
Mari gialli.
Gongs,
Carovane:
Il carminio di Bombay e l’ora bruciato dell’IRAN
Ne porto un geroglifico sull’ala nera.
Anima girasole, il fenomeno convergere in questo centro di danza;
Ma il canto più bello è ancora quello dei sensi nudi.

Silenzio, musica meridiana,
qui e nel mondo poesia circolare :
L'oggi si sposa col sempre
nel diadema dell'iride che s'alza.
Siedo alla mia tavola, e fumo e guardo :
Ecco una foglia giovane che trilla nel verziere difaccia;
I bianchi clombi volteggiano per l'aria come lettere d'amore buttate dalla finestra;
Conosco il simbolo, la cifra, il legame
Elettrico
La simpatia delle cose lontane;
Ma ci vorrebbero delle frutta, delle luci e delle moltitudini
Per tendere il festone miracolo di questa pasqua.
Il giorno si sprofonda nella conca scarlatta del'estate;
E non ci sono più parole
Per il ponte di fuoco e di gemme.

Giovinezza, tu passerai come tutto finisce al teatro
Tant Pis! Mi farà allora un vestito favoloso di vecchie affichés.
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