Twelve poems by the Italian poet, author of Nei Giardini di Suzhou (2015), Le regole del controdolore (2016), Alambic (2018), Nanita (Otata’s Bookshelf, 2017), Eva (2018), among others, as part of World Poetry/Prose Portfolio, curated by Sudeep Sen
Forest
I was a leaf that swings in the wind
I was the branch from which the words hang
I was the long-haired fern
The fern that embraces dreams
I was the green that enchants
The trail that goes on
the dark, I was the bark
made of bread and scratches
and tiny footprints
I was the light, the sunshine twinkling
among the branches of trees
The hope of a flight
The bee dancing on flowers
I was a little bird
A nightingale that sings
and does not let itself be seen
I was the wind. I was the wind, yes
which passes on the heads, which sounds
I was the rain
the thunderous thunderstorm
I was the uncertain step
and the silent voice
I was the whisper of a child
speaking to his angels
I was the ground beaten and turned
I was the swan lifting its neck and flying
I was the little sleeping acorn
A seed hanging on its pappus
I was the proud look of the wolf
I was the forgiveness
I was the sky hidden by a cloud
I was the cry of the owl
A butterfly, I was all
I was all that I am
I was the secret revealed
I was what you call mother
I was the blow of the world, a breath
The deepest breath of soul
The Angel and the Cosmos
He and the cosmos were there
to touch the bottom of the silence.
A tree is the world
which nourishes roots in the child.
The child is the tree
throwing new gems
and tending branches to heaven.
The tree and the child
were there to touch
the bottom of the silence.
No one knew what they said.
The secrets lie hidden in the thick of the woods.
The child who was speaking to trees became man.
The tree has hidden the child in its bark.
Slowly it aged.
No one will ever know what it was listening to.
The tree and man are still here
to touch the bottom of the silence.
What they say no one knows.
Maybe that's all their secret:
listen, lose the leaves, the years
feel to live, tell what it is
what it was, what it will be.
A tree is the world
that sprouts into the heart of man.
Man is the tree
which leaves the leaves
and let them go to the wind.
The angel and the cosmos are always here
to touch the bottom of the silence.
The Little Girl Talking to the Trees
Someone wonders if ever exists
the little girl talking to the trees.
She has hidden a dream in the tin box
The letter has remained untouched, and the dream,
who knows it? Someone wonders
what the little girl talking to the trees said.
A dream made of tin and wind roots
Here! She peeps out behind the trunk.
Someone wonders if the little girl
talking to the trees ever existed.
I found her tin box
intact buried under the tree in the garden
When I opened it — trembling hands —
all the words have flown out
A fall of autumn like the leaves
of the horse chestnut, even they have gone far
They are withered in the dream
There is no one to listen anymore
Only the tree stand there waiting for
the leaves going to born, for the coming — sooner or later —
Of the tin box girl, because she cannot be her,
the one who holds it in hands
If she no longer knows how to play ...
If she cannot listen, she cannot be
the little girl talking to the trees ...
if she is no longer be able to doing it ... or yes?
A Flower is Never the Same
The days pass as the clouds pass
on my head. And the years dissolve
in the music of time. Do not look for me.
A flower is never the same.
Every day is different. You will tire.
So is also my life. I will not return to blossom.
There will be no bees gathering nectar
among my petals. No hand will catch me, unexpected.
I will wither. And you will not recognize me. You will
always look for the dark flower of nostalgia in me.
There will be an uncertain scent of that flower.
A memory that could hardly shows the vision.
Do not look for me. I come from the tree
which is unknown to you. I‘m not a part.
I am the whole. And you cannot really see me.
But… The wind will carry away these leaves,
it will lead them right near to you.
When you’ll take them into your hands
remember to read the little poems
written between ribs. There I am.
I Hugged a Ginkgo Biloba
Today I hugged a Ginkgo biloba
Putting the palms on the bark from the thousand streets
I understood its heart as a prehistoric creature
beating slowly ... don don don
It was wishpering distant tolls
of an old bell out of time.
I strained my ears to listen to its being
all my body intented to become an antenna
receptive, I sank my toes
among the millennial roots and I found
that they were feet of giants, intact,
with inside every step of the story,
kept in keeping with the spirit of the tree
to remind us where we started off.
Hanged on the nearest branch
delicate maidenhair’s butterflies
—the bilobate leaves — talked to me, again,
and it was a language of rustling-fan
that I have not been able to capture ...
Yet, I realized, listening,
all the mystery of life,
Of another daughter world and for it generated,
I, alive and kicking, surrounded by vegetable matter
every heartbit and breath of mine, I warned
the solidity of the seed and its might.
Today I hugged a Ginkgo
and all my thoughts have become a leaf
and every leaf, soul of the world.
The Old Girl
It will be the rain
that confuses my tears
that every step seems uncertain
that I don’t distinguish the dawn twilight
from the shaded sunset ...
It will be that I’ve lost time
— or time has lost me —
that I care not the hours in the sad days
of December, that I bow
to this passive death of the pressing minute
that I don’t look for the wrinkle where
it wasn’t there before.
I’m going to be green
also in the white of the hair:
everything, buried by pale snow,
It’ll rest cramped in silver sleep...
And I’ll go
silent and old, like a little girl,
I too, sleeping
One Day I Will Become a Tree
One day when my hair will stop growing,
I’d like to be a willow, rustling in the sun springs of leaf
combing myself with the wind and ruffling hair in storm.
One day when my heart will not be so much red
maybe it will also have stopped hurting me. Then I’ll become
a linden: leave its thousand green hearts palpitating in the sky,
just like it I’d like to be tree-threshold lifting veil.
One day when my legs will stand horizontally
I’ll arise straight on root tips, and maybe I'll going to be happier
when a burning star will fall about in my branches-arms.
Then I’ll turn every wrinkle into the bark, grooves and caries will write,
silent, my pain. One day when I’m going to be a tree, maybe.
That day when I’ll not have any more tears to cry
I’ll distil amber gems of cypress. And when you’ll
not see again my hands move in none of my gestures,
I'll let them borrow by the chestnut trees of India:
my new five green fingers, composed into a caress as ancient mudra.
I’ll count no longer the days of the human species
mine will be a life of rings and suspensions
and the circular time of nature and seasons,
in one breath, will take me back to my old home.
I'll have the eyes of wild beech forest and long lashes Tillandsia
my silent mouth in almond and magnolia goblets,
exploding in bloom, will silence all the words.
I’ll have black breasts carved in ebony wood and mysterious birch hips,
my sex will be a bitter fruit, maybe it’ll going to have the sour taste of peach.
And the seeds, the fearless, will have wings and pulp,
on their journey they’ll still take me elsewhere.
I’ll leave out the winters and cover me with their snow;
even my wounded womb will have its little nests,
obscure and unexpected, in the hollow trunk of a century-old olive tree.
One day when I’ll become a tree, I’ll stop
to be flesh and blood, my new life will have
the green flavour of the lymph, the ancient softness
of a sequoia trunk. And it’ll resist the fire of the days,
the ashes of the years, the bullets and the shots of the sick.
As a sister I’ll might have an hamadryad, ants and birds
as relatives and friends. And as a mother, again, the forest.
One day I'll talk to you in new words, with the wisdom
of who is standing and can no longer walk, but don’t say it
to the fox, to the woodpecker, to the squirrel or they’ll scare and
in my trunk they’ll not be tears so I’ll not be able to caress them anymore.
That day you’ll cannot say that I'm dead, you’ll can say instead
that, like the leaf tree, I will change the colour of my dress.
They Have Taken the One I Love
They have taken the one I love
cutted his wings of damned angel
they have taken and tried him
— they say — for too much love
It seems that he loved me more than he should
that he has neglected God for my skin
but they don’t know that through me
he has worshiped the Highest above all others
they don’t know that he has glorified Him
he has whispered ardent prayers
and made the soul an altar
they don’t know he has done honor
to the desiring sky of every man
that he made a prayer of every kiss
every caress a purification rite
every syllable the precious eucharist
of the eternal and silent beauty of the love.
Silent Nest
You are born
by silent nests
feather weight words
bosom nurtured
are spread wings
suspended in flight
cloud banks
that embrace the earth
Bits of Time
It is beats of life
I gather from you
in the rapid melting of day
fatigue dissipated into ecstasy
diluted into drops
in a lump of ire
when full flood rushes strongest
overpowering me
sour water of your dream
mixed to mine
we are immense
together and luminous
even if distant as pale stars
fading into dawn
Oranges and Lemons
I have not forgotten
the scent of orange blossoms
on your hair
you have left the remains of nerols
on my bed sheets
oranges and lemon trees
bloom every sunset
on love’s lips
The Dream
Hug me
from roots to tips
how does storm water with trees ...
when the wind comes
between the branches
embraces this body of leaves
you know
the thousand springs I watched
the sleepless nights
made of melancholic stars:
take them between your arms
and cuddle up to find the dream
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