poems by: Luigi Cannillo
Translated by:Michael d'Esposito" from Italian .
The gaze fathoms
from the dark edges the bottom
of the well, invisible, the danger.
The grown ups warn,
beware of the tarantula.
We still do not know
shape for that name.
The sunken threat does not ripple.
The fountain does not roar while
they forbid us to dip and drink.
Will it be claws or horns to tear?
Open jaws mixed with our screams?
Tentacles which swallow or poison?
Lightening jumped out of water?
Misery and war will explode tarantula.
While mystery guards every passion
from the cistern throbs in every effort,
as shadows dominate the asters of the garden,
The beast growls from afar,
shakes our fate.
We lie in wait,
flat under the tall grass or like knives
vertical in the corners of barns.
We will be first
Light so definitive
as to shake the incandescent gates
asks why you do not return.
The roads in midsummer go back
to the origins leading nowhere.
A cancer of the plain bonds the city
barren of river, leaning not on the sea,
no body of mountains to shield.
This is the place, all banishes us.
Here we can only light rancour
and consume it. Will this empty nest
hold us in the flowing air?
Iron and asphalt chained, silence
only a blister of talent
blowing us beyond the line’s end.
We are no longer here
but not yet elsewhere
and without a dwelling we breathe emptiness.
They will be back, but the evenings
pushed beyond dinner’s steam
mercifully encourage a certainty
That the sun, rather than celebrate
the triumph of the season,
shines ferocious on our absence.
Between armour and sky
weighs entirely our gravity.
Fruit and hail, every event
snaps and falls
invoking the ground.
The forehead must break the visor
to chase the source
in the emptiness from which gush
seasons and incompleted gestures.
Let me feel your hand
between skin and armour
sow the negated caresses.
Body of all absent hands
weaves the nourishment basket
til from bones are born
curls of wind and sighs.
As the Sirocco stuns
and exhausts the joints.
As fireworks light dreams.
Empty plain evenings, early nights
Fog assaults the window
No other place accessible
We must stay and blind
Without figures in motion
Turbulence of leaves and sleepless animals,
Without light on the farm
Even our voice useless
Moved objects have sounds
To speak pages and clocks
In exile ticked in silence
Disconsolate all expectations spread
If the radio announces
Still fog in the Padana valley
The invisible empire wraps
Woollen balls to the cribs
First memory sprouts
Darkness teaches waiting
Years of presumed glory
Thrown on high
Like caps rejoicing
When summer dinners opened wide
The generous doors to the neighbourhood
And then rushing shiny to the variety show
Pushed without past
To follow the century
Time in bills for adults
Signed head down to cancel
Bruises of fatigue and nightly frenzy
They saved us from the stories
Of parades the race for shelters
Why the wounds and change of uniform
History set aside for the grown ups
For me on the edges of silence
Races solitary theatre
Cartoon heroes and obstacles to face
Nobody now is allowed
The luxury of nostalgia
Documents burn in our hands
Without ever consuming
History remains the wrenching time
And it blows, skin
Still burning
This our crown
The battle field without truce
The gaze fathoms
from the dark edges the bottom
of the well, invisible, the danger.
The grown ups warn,
beware of the tarantula.
We still do not know
shape for that name.
The sunken threat does not ripple.
The fountain does not roar while
they forbid us to dip and drink.
Will it be claws or horns to tear?
Open jaws mixed with our screams?
Tentacles which swallow or poison?
Lightening jumped out of water?
Misery and war will explode tarantula.
While mystery guards every passion
from the cistern throbs in every effort,
as shadows dominate the asters of the garden,
The beast growls from afar,
shakes our fate.
We lie in wait,
flat under the tall grass or like knives
vertical in the corners of barns.
We will be first
Light so definitive
as to shake the incandescent gates
asks why you do not return.
The roads in midsummer go back
to the origins leading nowhere.
A cancer of the plain bonds the city
barren of river, leaning not on the sea,
no body of mountains to shield.
This is the place, all banishes us.
Here we can only light rancour
and consume it. Will this empty nest
hold us in the flowing air?
Iron and asphalt chained, silence
only a blister of talent
blowing us beyond the line’s end.
We are no longer here
but not yet elsewhere
and without a dwelling we breathe emptiness.
They will be back, but the evenings
pushed beyond dinner’s steam
mercifully encourage a certainty
That the sun, rather than celebrate
the triumph of the season,
shines ferocious on our absence.
Between armour and sky
weighs entirely our gravity.
Fruit and hail, every event
snaps and falls
invoking the ground.
The forehead must break the visor
to chase the source
in the emptiness from which gush
seasons and incompleted gestures.
Let me feel your hand
between skin and armour
sow the negated caresses.
Body of all absent hands
weaves the nourishment basket
til from bones are born
curls of wind and sighs.
As the Sirocco stuns
and exhausts the joints.
As fireworks light dreams.
Empty plain evenings, early nights
Fog assaults the window
No other place accessible
We must stay and blind
Without figures in motion
Turbulence of leaves and sleepless animals,
Without light on the farm
Even our voice useless
Moved objects have sounds
To speak pages and clocks
In exile ticked in silence
Disconsolate all expectations spread
If the radio announces
Still fog in the Padana valley
The invisible empire wraps
Woollen balls to the cribs
First memory sprouts
Darkness teaches waiting
Years of presumed glory
Thrown on high
Like caps rejoicing
When summer dinners opened wide
The generous doors to the neighbourhood
And then rushing shiny to the variety show
Pushed without past
To follow the century
Time in bills for adults
Signed head down to cancel
Bruises of fatigue and nightly frenzy
They saved us from the stories
Of parades the race for shelters
Why the wounds and change of uniform
History set aside for the grown ups
For me on the edges of silence
Races solitary theatre
Cartoon heroes and obstacles to face
Nobody now is allowed
The luxury of nostalgia
Documents burn in our hands
Without ever consuming
History remains the wrenching time
And it blows, skin
Still burning
This our crown
The battle field without truce