La Poesia italiana del Novecento - The italian Poetry of the 20th century
Massimo Rossi
Massimo Rossi was born in Venezia in July 1956. He lives and works in Mogliano Veneto (Treviso) as freelance journalist, expert of ancient autographs and manuscripts. In 1992 Grafic House Editrice published his first collection of poems Aritmie Metriche and in 1993 La Mano sulla Carne an anthology of erotic poems by him and by three other poets, with a Preface by Dario Bellezza. In 1998 Edizioni del Leone published his Minima Poetica e Altri Versi finalist at Premio Ungaretti (Ungaretti Award). In 1999 he won the first prize at theatre writing national contest "Sottopalco". His poems are reported in various anthologies, poetry magazines and Internet. Publishing director of Libreria Chiara & Co. Editrice.
last publication: La Sorte dei Poeti (o dell'ironia) Theatre, Edizioni del Leone, March 2001.
OFFICIAL WEB SITE: http://www.massimo-rossi.com (NEW!)
edited and unedited
Pour rester aupres de toi
je voudrais être le rêve
que tu oublies à ton réveil
*
Just to be by you
I wish I were the dream
you forget upon awakening.
*
Con tal que pueda quedarme junto a tí
ser querría tu sueño
ese que al despertar olvidas
Ottobre 2000
Now I have something mine:
your beautiful belly button
north cardinal point
of the primordial desire
icon of the rebel pleasure
eye of your skin
lash-less scoundrel
with a zucchini*-shaped cap
hostel or five-star hotel
skipping small bean
juicy little diamond of the eros
over the sugary gore.
*
courgette
The kiss coming from your finger
is an alien signal.
emotion of the first contact.
wonder. want for feel.
amazement. want for all.
You are like the marble around the well
turning and turning but never falling
into the hole where pigeons drink.
even the finger pushing it you are and six times
I love you love you again and would love you in rhyming rimes.
that sweet time of the marble
glass iris in the round
can come back and it will.
[Note by the translator] = The poet is referring to a child’s play common in Venice, his town. Each child has his own personal marble, which should be pushed along a well border with two fingers without falling into the hole where pigeons always go and drink rainwater. These holes are usually also full of rubbish and if the marble falls in there, the owner has to take it out with his own hands.
Time flows through river sluices
we were there abstracted and
your and my face were winter portraits
facing west while my tachycardiac heart
and the back of your hands tingled
in vocative consonances.
in boundless rooms in mossy halls in crumbling holes
does not lie feeling but its contemplation.
lyric intuition pure crocean* intuition.
rebel inspiration originating
beautiful but lonely words
lonely words of sun.
*
Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), Italian philosopher.
Let the dusk
swallow the milk-white clouds
move to the mirror so that you are reflected
in the orange disc of the day falling asleep.
from here I will see you like Afrodite
like a divine vision taking my breath away.
I will breathe in deeply in order not to die
I will pray the exhausted sun
to get away from his sleep
thus I will be adoring you, in a never-ending sunset.
Mid - October 2000
To you sleeping beside me
A caress expected in the dark
made the room a moonlight night
for a while.
Turn away, so that you can’t hear me:
The sky is recalling tears,
rousing ghosts sleeping in my prisons
behind saline water bars harder than steel.
Is it just the beginning? Just the beginning.
In the woods hanging in your eyes filled with blue consternation
I’m afraid an immutable farewell immutable winter dwells.
- Good Night -
Here all begins
Here all begins.
The comings and goings of faint sunsets
and of dark-sick sunrises
mark my children’s age.
Living is like recovering
always: waiting
is the one remedy to madness.
Or is like a pawnshop
where they lend you one third of good,
and every six months you renew your heart
for a helpless smile.
I realise I’m growing old
by settled loans,
by paid and unpaid bills
by higher and higher dental expenses
by car and boiler wear and tear
by scrape and win lottery useless cards
by evenings in Web
seeking in the virtual the real.
I still trust you Leopardi,
but no more the vigour of the past
memory is a piteous curse
timeless without dimensions,
melancholy gave her chair
to the teacher of all teachers: the instant.
On him I depend, from him I learn
now, the friendly art.
In a natural contrary
In a natural contrary is a river reversed
from ocean to source: it flows down.
Nor of sweet, nor of salted water is its way
not half-blood water but biologic swill
where even an eel, in the natural contrary,
spinster and misanthrope for choice
would crave descent.
Beyond all intentions I observe you
with caudal fin of broad glory: you swim
by gills of less visible pain: you breath.
From source to ocean : you rise.
****
It's a matter of taking stocks, you said
to stun even the sacrosanct left.
Coffee with milk was and is bitter, and tea with milk too
and there is a reason: we do not put sugar.
But among one thousand and one different conclusions
our sexes have an absolute value
certainly not that past cuckolding
cherishing in orgasm a new sunrise.
It was ashes
It was ashes even before flaming
that understanding meditated as undying.
You had veiled intentions
trunks because, flat emotions
frail sliding matches.
With your head bowed
waiting for ashes
you insist on setting fire to tomorrow
incombustible as today.
And from the dormitory quarter,
where at night you lay my
sprawled body
insomnia dreariness comes up
and the suspicion that speech
opposes, defeated, to nothingness.
Planting oneself in sexless grounds
provokes hardly visible burns.
You could, reasoning, call them:
stratified solitudes.
They form oblique guidelines
like indifferent glances.
I’ve never loved!
I – have – never – loved – anyone!
From the cirrus at the first floor
I descended, as damned soul
to the basement, accompanied by a Virgilio in skirt
met at the station one night in August.
Is Hell the right punishment to the unjust
(or bonus) to sweet idleness?
I’ve never loved!
I – have – never – loved – anyone!
Wells, your black eyes, abysses
ravines, but woman’s gifts;
prizes I wish I could always have for my career
as stubborn idler.
Do you know my interest in you is there
under the goblet your lightly drawn belly?
In your breast just glimpsed?
I am not talking about love
let’s leave that to poets
but about flesh and passion
about repeated orgasms
about animal heats and sweaty skins
about liquids dried on sheets.
And I do not bag pardon for my lust
but robust loins.
Ah Wagner!
I am moving as I can, in this hell!
Memory is abandoning it day after day!
Ah Wagner!
I am moving as I can, in this hell:
among traps and violin chords
among brass and tricks covered with roses
I am following the memory abandoning it.
It is the same story without story
I am trying a non-existing reason:
death, her death, unavoidable
Life, my life, avoidable.
Ah Wagner!
****
Of your darkness I have but a flash:
I rang you did not answer.
****
High in the sky I am holding out
an hollow thought, ignoring the rowdy sun.
And I am waiting for dread to cease
when the humble moon climbs.
(28 July, 1996)
This is a sourish coloured day,
with aluminium grey sound
tasting deaf
Rain recycled from a far storm
does not ask for my permission
to join my birthday:
no harm done. I have not prepared any cake.
translated in English by Sandra Michelacci
