Da Fischi di merlo (Edizioni del Leone, Venezia 2011)

There’s no relief

for this our end,

Silvia,

Together we’ll

at least be one

with our

disenchanted

second guesses.

*

You looked me over from the feet upwards

- strangely enough -

tenderly empty, your eyes

dunked in illness.

This has no pity,

it’d be a never-ending world

it’d be too good to be true.

You must get out of the scrum!
Grope, struggle

dragged by the collar,

if necessary.

A haze won’t wait,

dismal, it knocks at the door

that spins in the rush.

There’s a crowd at the entrance

pressed by life

under the weight of this extreme,

strange beggared existence.

- You didn’t let me in -

didn’t open up, switched off ...

maybe you were jealous

of my staying through time

always the same, careful

before the mirror

of childhood ... so what,

we even removed the constancy

of loving each other,

to hold each other in time

bizarre ...- I underplay -

I struggle to recognise your soul.

I’ve discarded cigarettes.

I can throw away Now.

For Adriana

*

It’s all about the heart,

and being anxious to understand each other

and the daily disquiet.

Even the smoke from the last cigarette

forcibly exhaled

before sleep...

a bit player in a novel

drawers us into the background.

His. An unseen spasm...

Squashed between fingers,

a dog end alights

on the remains of a plant

ruined from the roots:

instantly it’s fire. Possibly.
If it weren’t for the frost

that beat us by the clock.

You stagger, and confusion

wins the night.

I repeat, though, it’s only smoke

and it can be blown away.

Were it not for the discomfort in it’s kick.

Melancholy.

*

The empathy that drives me to Him, a true compassion ferried along in the course of several sleepless nights, much want, and many a poultice of philosophy, is his presence being un-interchangeable with mine: he has become, and has been always, inseparable from me. But only now do I see him as such, clearly: being the prey of my own impatience, coughing up a sleeping self unknown to me; in this order - imposed by the butler! - in a city, mine, in which fog is really the dust of neglect, in this lack of focus, of new blood. I feel haunted enough to undermine them all.

one among many,
Henry Jekyll

(Translations by Christopher Channing, http://www.chrischanning.net/)

* *

Il neige Noël sur la mer.

Ici, sur la terre, tombe le ciel

Et le crépuscule nous submerge.

Je reste la bouche entr'ouverte

Pas de rive

Dans l'attente

D’un amarrage.

*

Une fleur, prends garde :

Ne croît pas à l'ombre du soleil.

Sans même se toucher.

Que sauront-ils l'un de l'autre?

Et pourtant du giron de pierre

Elle éclot tout pareil;

La terre est preuve d'amour.

En équilibre toujours,

Mais sur la tige.

*

Chasser du souffle les nuées

Des forêts de petit houx

Et en déchirer les tuniques du ciel…

Pourquoi?

Pour le sérum même des glaciers

Réduits à l'état de diamants,

Pour faire baisser la fièvre

D’avoir un «tiens»

Et non deux «tu l’auras».

*

Faisons ainsi:

Toi éteins la Lune, 

Moi je recueille les tessons

D’étoiles explosées

Et je roule le ciel,

Persan de haute lice.

Ma Lune 

S'est perdue.

Me reste 

L'habituelle obscurité

Viciée

Et sur-viciée.

(Traductions de Antoine Isenbrandt-Pitton)